


There's A Ghost In My Lungs

by crossfirehurricane



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dubious Consent, F/M, Forced Relationship, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Female Character, R plus L equals J
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 22:18:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossfirehurricane/pseuds/crossfirehurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU.</p><p>A story of new beginnings, old ghosts, opportunities both taken and missed, and the things Lyanna does for love. Lyanna returns to Westeros with Jon after seven years abroad in Essos, but she isn't sure what to expect.</p><p>Not a happy story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> I've determined that if I write one fic for too long, I get ideas for others. Tags will be added as the story progresses (though it won't be that long). Enjoy!  
> the title is from a Florence + the Machine song.

After 7 years in Pentos, Lyanna decides to return home.

She does not know what brought the urge on so suddenly. She only knew that she woke one night with a terrible need to see Westeros again and all that came with it. Jon had slept so soundly beside her, his long legs curled up nearly to his chest as he breathed softly, evenly. Lyanna had envied him then, wishing she could sleep so soundly. She ran a hand over those brown curls, and then buried her nose in his neck. He was seven years of age and he still had a neck that smelled as sweet as a babe's.

To move again would not be difficult. That is all she had been doing for these past years after she snuck away from the Tower of Joy, shuffling between one city and the other, hoping to find a safe place she may call home. She had yet to find one; every place seemed to lack something, though what she could not say. It was only recently that she could place words to what she required: a sense of belonging.

She dreamed of Winterfell and it’s towering Great Keep, of the warm stone walls of the castle, of the lovely godswood and the frightening wolfswood. She could smell the dewy grass of the fields outside of Winterfell, felt the summer snow melting in her hair and shivered at its cool breezes. While she earned her keep at the inn, she heard the sounds of her brothers’ laughter: Brandon’s, so loud and full of mirth, Ned’s soft chuckle, and Benjen’s body shaking giggles all filled her ears as she washed and folded clothes. When she looked to Jon, who tried his best to fold with her, all she could see were her brothers; which one, she was not sure. Though it shamed her to admit it, she had forgotten some of what they had looked like. She could see Brandon’s smile, piece together some of Ned’s solemn face, recalled Benjen’s long, lanky limbs, but that was all. Some days she recalled more than others; it was the moments when she remembered them in their entirety, from their toes to the hair on their heads did Lyanna feel her happiest.

Jon read to her from a book he borrowed from the innkeeper, a story of knights and chivalry and glorious rescues. She stared at his face, so scrunched in concentration as he slowly read in Bastard Valyrian. He did this most every night, simply reading to himself, unless she asked him to read aloud for her. It tore at her heart to see him so bookish and to hear Valyrian come from his lips. She had hoped to leave all memories of Rhaegar behind in that stifling tower when she escaped from it; instead, she is reminded of him every day as his characteristics resonated in her sweet son.

Jon takes pause after reading a line about a true knight so gallant and brave that he saved a woman from a cave of bears. “I’d like to be a knight, mama,” Jon tells her in the Common Tongue, the language she had him learn alongside Valyrian. “They’re good people.”

Lyanna gave him a tight smile. “Yes, my love, they are,” she tells him, though it is not the truth. She is not accustomed to lying to her son, but she wished to spare him the less noble details, that knights were not always true, that they did whatever was told of them and damned what was good and humane in order to stay true to their vows.

Jon did not need to hear that, she decided. To let him think they were all true was more suited to a boy his age. Perhaps one day, when he’s older, she’ll tell him she once knew a knight named Arthur Dayne, whom she thought to be true, but only proved that he served a prince over what was just.

Jon falls asleep with the book in his lap and the last word of a sentence hanging on his lips. Her sweet son was her only joy. She had birthed him in a dingy roadside inn on the coast of Dorne while being attended to by an aged peasant woman who stuffed a filthy rag in her mouth so she wouldn’t keep screaming and frightening the guests. After she pulled Jon out of her and dumped him in her arms covered in blood and sticky fluids with a cord still attached to his navel, the woman asked, “Who’s Eddard? Did ‘e get that babe on ya?” Lyanna was too weary to tell her that it was her brother’s name she had shouted, not her lover’s. Her lover would never have the privilege of his name on her lips ever again.

Yet every once in a while, much to her dismay, Jon would ask about his father. “Is he nice?” he would ask innocently. “Does he love you?” Lyanna would shush him with a kiss to his forehead and a promise that she would tell him one day, but not today. She did not know what exactly she would say. Should she tell him that he lied when he said he loved her? Dare she say that he only wanted her so that he could put a child inside her?

Perhaps she might mention the cool edge of his voice, and all that mumbling about a song and a prince and how she was the ice and he the fire. But Lyanna had felt the coldness of his touch and that unbearably bored look in his eyes and knew he was the ice that refused to melt to fire. She knew, albeit too late, that he felt nothing for her, that when he fucked her he did it to achieve his own ends and damned if she was tired, or wasn’t wet enough, or that near the end of their time together there was no pleasure and only discomfort. Aye, he was always gentle and kind with her, constantly murmuring sweet words to her and kissing her skin, but she was his prized broodmare and he was her sire, and as such he rode her just to have his seed take root inside her. Then after it did, he rode her for his own pleasure, because she was there and never objected.

She did object once, though. It had been on the night before he was to leave for King’s Landing. He only chuckled and called her droll before spreading her legs. Perhaps it was then, as he noiselessly pushed into her, his muscled abdomen rubbing her pregnant round one, that she realized that he never cared for her at all. It was a revelation that came too late for the thousands dead, among them her charred father and strangled brother. But it would not be too late for her son.

Lyanna thinks that she would spare Jon the details about his father. “He was a prince,” she would one day tell him. “And he loved you very much. More than me, even.”

And though she knew that Rhaegar was dead and could no longer reach her, Westeros seemed a dangerous place to be. When she had first reached Pentos, she thought never to return, as even with Robert Baratheon on the throne, who had once claimed to love her very much. She knew there would be no solace in that memory-ridden land, no mirth to find in its ghosts. And perhaps she deserved as much, for being a foolish, stupid girl who didn’t behave as her father taught her. Lyanna knew she deserved a life of loneliness and shame, but the gods blessed her with a child who would be her only companion.

That blessing now seemed much like a curse now, as Jon aimed to lead her away from peace with nostalgia for a home he had never known.

It was a hot evening, and they had the windows open to let the breeze in. Jon had eaten oranges before he went to sleep, its sweet juices still sticky on his hands as he held her fingers in his palm. “Do I have a family?” he murmured groggily, grey eyes drooping shut.

“You have me, little one,” she answered with a somber smile, her throat burning with the need to sob. Lyanna had not shed a tear in years. She would not start now.

“That’s it?” he mumbled before slumber overtook him, and his breathing turned rhythmic, as that of a sleeping body’s.

It was not it. She knew that Eddard was still in the North, wed to Catelyn Tully and surely by now have had many pretty babes. And surely, hopefully, Benjen was still alive and well. Jon had uncles, an aunt, and cousins. And it seemed as if he wanted to meet them.

Lyanna packed their things that evening into a leather cross-shoulder bag only able to fit a few changes of clothes and the bare necessities. She had changed into a plain linen dress with long sleeves, and found their modest bag of golden dragons she brought from Westeros, setting it between her breasts. On her ankle she wore a holster; in it was a dagger, her only one. She stayed up the entire night planning each minute of each day to come, repeating the names of roads she knew she’d need to take or avoid, counting on her fingers just how long their small savings could support them before they’d need to stop and Lyanna would have to earn another small fortune. When she was not thinking, she was frightened, trembling like a leaf caught in a storm. For the first time in years, she found herself praying to the Old Gods for forgiveness and to the New for the gift of strength. Lyanna had been strong for a long, long time, but she knew she would need more.

When Jon woke they immediately got along on their journey. He ate bread and honey to break his fast as they walked along the streets of Pentos, which despite the early hour were already bustling. Lyanna knew they would need a day to reach the coast, then more than that 'til they reached Westeros. And when they reached Westeros, they’d be a thousand miles from Winterfell, and then…

Lyanna gripped Jon’s hand tighter, and prayed again for strength.

* * *

 Lyanna’s breath caught in her throat when she reached the gates of Winterfell.

She extended a hand to feel the iron bars, not quite believing that they were real. She had dreamt many a time of these gates, and even in her dreams they were always closed to her, as they were now. Her vision went through the bars to where she could see the castle itself, illuminated only by a few torches and from the light in the windows up above. Even in the black of night she could discern some familiar features: sculptures of direwolves on each side of the doors, the familiar square spires on the arch above, walls whose shade of grey she knew all too well.

Jon gave a little whine beside her, tugging her hand. “It’s cold,” he said between chattering teeth, and Lyanna rubs his hand in a poor attempt to warm it. They had spent the last of their coin on a decent pair of furs, but Lyanna now realized that they weren’t nearly warm enough for a night in the North. Jon had initially been fascinated by the fact that he could see his breath in front of his face in a puff of white air, but that delight faded after a few thousand steps.

Lyanna backs up to get a better view of the gates from the top. If memory served, there would be a man in a chair on one of the columns beside the gate, and he would have a fire burning and many questions. Lyanna saw that this was true, only the man was sleeping. Grimacing, she braced herself to shout.

“Pardon me!” she called out to the man above. She heard him snore loudly in his sleep, but no response came. “Pardon me, gatekeeper!” she cried again, only louder. She heard another snort, then the smacking of wet lips. The man stood, and then leaned over the stone railing, pulling the torch from its sconce.

“Who goes there?” he calls out, bringing the flame in front of his face. Lyanna sees it is an unfamiliar face, and not the gatekeeper she recalled from her girlhood.

“A woman and her son,” he returns, chafing Jon’s fingers again with her thumb. “I’ve come to beg for audience with Lord Eddard Stark.” The taste of her brother’s name on her lips makes her heart beat faster. She so desperately wanted to see him again.

The gatekeeper crinkles his nose down at them. “Lord Stark is sleeping. If you wish to hold an audience with ‘im, you’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

Lyanna furrows her brows in frustration. _I could tell him my name. Perhaps he’ll let me in then,_ she tells herself. _But perhaps it would do nothing but ruin my disguise. I musn’t._ She looks down to Jon, still shivering, and Lyanna stiffens her jaw.

“I must see him tonight. It is terribly urgent-“

“You can come tomorrow,” the man cuts her off gruffly. “There’s an inn a ways from here; go sleep there for the night.”

“I’ve no coin to pay for lodgings,” Lyanna confesses, though she is not embarrassed. There was many a time that she had not a copper to her name- too many to be ashamed of each time.

“Then you can sleep out here tonight,” the man replies, garnering a frightened whimper from Jon beside her. The man goes to turn her back on her, but Lyanna cannot relent.

“Please, good man, I beg of you to wake Lord Stark. He shall not be cross with you and I simply must see him tonight. Please, gatekeeper, I’ve no doubt in my mind that Lord Stark will not be angry at my intrusion. He knows who I am, and expects me.” The first part was true, but the second was a lie. It may very well be that Ned wanted nothing to do with her anymore, and would turn her away upon sight. Yet something in here told her that could never be true.

The gatekeeper pulls at his grey beard, his black eyes scrutinizing her. “And who might you be?” he asks with curiosity.

“I cannot say,” she replies mournfully. “I can only tell you that I am someone who is very close to Eddard Stark. The boy with me is a relation of his.”

“Relation in what way?”

“Again, I cannot say. But you must wake him. Tell him it is an urgent matter.”

The gatekeeper seems to ponder this statement while still tugging at the hairs on his chin. Then he drops his hand and returns the torch to its sconce. “The night is not that late,” he muses aloud. “Lord Stark might still be awake.” Lyanna’s heart begins to thump against her chest in anticipation. “I’ll open the gates for you, woman, and I’ll have someone show you inside. But if he refuses to see you, I’ll have you and your whelp tossed out into the wolfswood to serve as food for the bears.”

Jon whimpers again beside her, but she squeezed his hand to assure him all is well. “I accept your conditions, gatekeeper.”

The gates open for her with a mighty creak, opening the way to her old home. Lyanna’s heart is in her throat now, her mind reeling with unbearable dizziness. She leads Jon through them, jumping when they closed loudly behind her. A guard came from the darkness to hold her elbow as he led her through the side doors of the castle into the audience hall, where Lyanna recalled her father sitting high upon his chair and speaking to smallfolk who were anxious to express their grievances to their liege lord. Never did she think that she would be the one wringing her hands and awaiting her lord brother in this room.

It was decidedly warmer than outside, much to her relief and Jon’s. She had thought to count the minutes until someone walked through the doors, but Lyanna’s erratic heart and her spinning head could hardly allow her to count a single second. But when the doors did open, her heart nearly burst in delight.

The happiness was quickly snuffed as she saw an aged man in a maester’s robes and iron chains who came to greet her. It was not the maester she recalled from her time in Winterfell, but someone entirely different. Lyanna stiffened at the sight of him.

“I’ve come to tell you that Lord Stark will not be seeing anyone tonight,” he told her in a slow, wise voice. “I suggest you go home.”

Lyanna found herself shaking her head vigorously, a fire building up in her limbs. “No, no, I must see him now,” she says with desperation, her hands balling into fists. “I’m begging you, good maester, to have him come and see me. He knows who I am.”

“Who are you?” he asks.

“No one,” Lyanna says impulsively. “I cannot say.”

The maester takes pause, his eyes studying her intently. “I see that you are no common woman,” he remarks wisely. Lyanna does not reply. “Regardless, he has given me orders to turn you away. There are guards who will escort you out.”

“No,” Lyanna said again with more savageness. “No, I cannot go! I must see him!” Her voice was rising higher and higher as she choked on her sorrow and desperation and anger, but all she wanted was Ned, Ned. Lyanna rushes to the maester, trying to move past him to navigate the halls and find her brother. The maester staggers out of her way with ease, but guards quickly grasp her arms and halt her in her place. “Ned! Ned!” His name tore itself from her throat as it did seven years ago when she was choking on a rag with her legs spread on a filthy mattress. “Ned, it’s me! Ned!” She could hear Jon begin to wail behind her, but Lyanna could not think of calming him. It was Ned, only Ned, her dearest brother Ned.

As she was being dragged away, Lyanna kicked and screamed like an unhappy, spoiled child. She had been returned to the audience hall when she heard more footsteps coming her way, likely more guards to help toss her and her son into the wolfswood. Lyanna shuts her eyes tight, cursing her stupidity and her rashness, and tries to think of how she was going to get the coin to return to Pentos and how her legs were going to carry her all the way back there again.

“Lyanna?” She heard her name for the first time since she abandoned it in the Tower of Joy, but it was a dream. It had to be a dream. No one knew her name. She was no one. “By the gods… Drop her!”

Lyanna falls to her knees with a hard thud, and she hisses between her teeth at the pain. She feels Jon’s body hug her arm, holding it as if she might disappear between his fingers. Then another hand, a large one, rests on her head. Lyanna opens her eyes to look up into a familiar face.

“Ned,” she murmurs shakily. Yes, the face was older, more lined, bearded and wise, but it was the same solemn face and the same watchful eyes she had come to depend on since she was a child.

When Ned pulls her into his chest for an embrace, Jon begins to cry again, likely fearful for his foolish mother. Lyanna lets him sob, but not out of spite; she wanted only to think of her brother’s protective arms and how, for once, she could allow herself to lean on someone.

"Where have you you been, you foolish girl?" he asks in his scolding voice, but she knew that it was not harsh, but loving, so loving, like the man himself. "I thought you were dead."

"I'm home," she whispers into his shoulder. "I'm home."


	2. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyanna and Ned talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy!! :)

Lyanna sat in an armchair in the den with her legs pulled up to her chest. Ned sat across from her, in a chair of his own, and threw passing glances at her from time to time. It was clear that he had questions, but didn't know how to phrase them. Lyanna's silence likely didn't help the cause.

After the hectic reunion the night before, Ned had ushered her and Jon into bed with no questions. "You both must be tired," he had told them with a frown. "Get your rest, and we'll talk on the morrow." But Lyanna could not sleep, and now she could not talk.

She had met Catelyn Tully (Stark, she reminded herself, she's a Stark now) in the morning, who had been kind enough, but eyed her with the sort of disdain proper ladies doled out to fallen women. Lyanna sensed a marked lack of sincerity in her insistence that she was delighted to meet her; Lyanna knew this as she had become quite keen on knowing what words were true and which ones weren't. It was a skill Lyanna had needed to survive.

Along with Catelyn, she met Ned's little pups. Robb was of Jon's age, with a head of auburn Tully curls, bright blue Tully eyes, and fair, creamy Tully skin. Sansa was the same, and even at four years old she was quite easily the prettiest girl Lyanna had ever seen. But it was Arya, the little pup of five moons, that Lyanna felt most akin to. She had dark hair, dark grey eyes, dark face, and a perpetual pout; had she been a little fairer of skin, girl could have passed for Lyanna at that age. There was also an enigmatic boy of one-and-ten, an Ironborn named Theon Greyjoy, who Ned had taken as a ward hardly a year ago. Jon had likened to the children with much hesitation. To see him greet them with curious eyes and a nervous smile brought on a pang of guilt to Lyanna's hardened heart. The boy hardly ever had a chance to befriend other children, and when he did it would not be long before they had to move again. Though Robb seemed affectionate and eager to be with his new cousin (his only cousin, Lyanna realized), Jon had spent the good part of the morning hiding behind Lyanna's skirts before taking a chance with Robb.

He was now somewhere in the castle playing with Robb, and though Lyanna itched to search for him and keep an eye on him, she knew Ned wanted her company.

Her brother scratches at his beard and looks to her again. She wondered for a passing moment how she looked like to him. Did he look to her face? Was it sorrowful and forlorn? Angry and restless? Did he notice her hands were calloused, worn, cracked, and that she had dirt under her nails? Perhaps he looked only to her eyes, in an attempt to read them.

"Where have you been all this time?" he asks tentatively. Lyanna looks to him to find him pinning her with eyes full of sorrow. She softened a little under them.

"Essos," Lyanna says, her learned misanthropy keeping her words vague. _He's your brother, you fool,_ she reminded herself. Lyanna tries again. "Pentos, mostly."

"Was it difficult?" he asks delving a little deeper.

"At first," she tells him, her eyes drifting to the crackling fire in the hearth. "If you work and earn your coin, it is not so difficult. But you do have to work." She had been a tavern maid, a stablehand, has washed clothes, tended to gardens; all unskilled work and what she had done the most of. She had for a few moons taught the children of wealthy parents how to read and write in the Common Tongue, but left when she discovered that they planned to place a bronze collar around her neck.

"Was learning Bastard Valyrian difficult?" Ned asks.

"Of course," she replies. "It took time. Jon was better at it than me for years. He likely still is." Like his father, he learned quickly, it seems.

"Your son speaks the Common Tongue with an accent," Ned notes. "But it is good that you taught him."

"Aye," Lyanna says with a nod. She hoped no one would think his speech strange.

"Your son, Jon. His father is…?” Ned trails off, unable to continue the question, but Lyanna knows what it is. She had expected him to ask sooner or later.

"He is Rhaegar's son," Lyanna says, hardly concealing her bitterness. She so wished she could say that he was not of any man's seed, that he was purely hers, but there would be no way for her to assert that.

"Then he is Jon Sand,” Ned says plainly. He did not mean harm, but a fire shoots up into her mind at his words.

“No,” she hissed cruelly, narrowing her eyes at her well-meaning brother. “He is not Sand, or Waters, or Snow. He is a trueborn Targaryen, but he goes by no such name.”

Ned’s eyes are wide. “How can you claim such a thing? He is your son, Lyanna, but he is a bastard too.”

“Jon’s father wedded me under the heart tree before he got him on me. If he were to go by a name, it would be Targaryen.” To admit it hurt. “He is simply Jon,” she adds in a softer tone, retracting her claws for now. It tired her to get angry. Calm was much more rewarding.

“Jon,” Ned mumbles, likely swallowing his words regarding how a boy without a surname was an unlucky thing. “Why did you choose that name?”

“I don’t know,” Lyanna admits. “I had thought it a good name. I never changed it after I chose it.”

Another silence passes between them, but Lyanna cannot determine if it was uncomfortable or not. Peace she was comfortable with; conversation she was not.

“I looked for you in Dorne,” Ned says aloud. Lyanna looks to him with wide eyes. “Seven of us met three Kingsguard knights in Dorne. They said they would defeat us, still in service to Rhaegar.” Lyanna’s breath is caught in her throat. This was a story she never heard, as she never stayed long enough to hear it. She had presumed the knights were hunting her in Essos, or dead. She had always hoped the latter. “Only Howland and I survived. We went up into the tower and checked every room. You were not there, sister.”

"I ran," Lyanna tells him with a heavy heart. She nearly wishes she would have waited now. "They had planned to take me to Essos as soon as I gave birth. They would take me there to watch over Jon, as Rhaegar would have wanted." Lyanna could not imagine what she would have done if such a thing were to happen. Rhaegar had already locked her up for a year, and though she crashed against the bars of her cage many a time, he always knew how to clip her wings and keep her in. But that was Rhaegar; for three knights, three men who served a selfish prince to move her from one cage to stick her into another... That was a cruelty she would not have borne. Lyanna had tired of the sting of chains and of having her life ruled by men. When Lyanna ran, it was of her choice, and it was alone.

"I had thought you were dead," Ned remarks gravely, grey face clouding over.

“Truly?” Lyanna asks in a small voice, his words rattling her bones.

Ned nods. “Howland searched Dorne for you as I searched the road to Riverrun. Enough time passed to where I could only assume that you had perished. What else was I supposed to think?”

 _You thought as I wanted you to think,_ Lyanna noted with a twinge of sorrow. When she disappeared, she wished for everyone to assume she was dead, and to never search for her. It pains Lyanna to think that the sweet crannogman Howland and her dear brother had tried; it was only a delay of misery.

“Had I found your bones, I would have buried you beside Brandon,” Ned says hoarsely, looking somewhere in the fire. “I feel you would have liked that.”

Time passes before Lyanna could breathe again. The mention of her eldest brother sends a fractured image of him swimming up to the front of her mind. She had been terribly close to him; by the gods, he had basically _raised_ her with Ned away at the Vale, her father immersed in his duties, and her mother dead. They had quarreled and fought, two wolves that growled threats at every slight, but they had loved each other dearly as well. Lyanna still loved him. He had died for her.

“I want to see Brandon and father,” she whispers suddenly, her throat burning.

Lyanna wanted to apologize.

* * *

The crypts are cold. Not unbearably so, but there is a nip in the stale air despite the torches that lined the walls. This place had always unsettled her, as a stone tomb must surely be a confining thing. Then again, so was death. Or so she believed.

The siblings do not exchange words as they walk, and the only sounds that accompanied them were the echoes of their footsteps and the crackling of fire. It is when they reach the end of the hall does Lyanna make noise; a sharp gasp catches in her throat as she stared upon a towering stone likeness of her father. He sat in a throne, as every King of Winter did, and with a gleaming sword across his lap. His hard stone eyes stared at a spot above her head, and his lips were pressed into a tight line, as they often were in life. On impulse, Lyanna reaches out to touch his carved fingertips.

Her eyes shift to her right, and her heart suddenly aches at the sight. It was Brandon, immortalized in stone, his face decidedly less handsome than she remembered, and with a severe line instead of an easy smile.

“That isn’t him,” Lyanna murmurs to herself. “He looked different from this.”

“A sculptor can only do so much, sister,” Ned answers mildly.

Her hand flutters up to his chin, gravelly and cold. An electric shock runs through her, and she is driven to her knees. Her chest feels tight and her throat constricting, and she knew she was breathing, but every breath came out raggedy and broken. “I’m sorry,” she hears herself muttering. “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

Tears threatened to spill, but she bites them back. Lyanna didn’t cry. She wouldn’t cry. She had to be strong. She feels Ned’s warm hand on the back of her neck; it is then that she realizes her head is bowed and pressed against Brandon’s immobile knee.

“You too, Ned,” she murmurs. “Forgive me for all the pain I’ve caused. I do not deserve your kindness.”

“Though you have been alone for so long, you mustn’t forget that you are my sister,” Ned says kindly, a smile heard in his voice. “I have thought myself to be without one for seven years. To find you here and safe in Winterfell brings me endless joy.”

Lyanna rolls her head to look up at Ned, the gravelly knee digging into her forehead. “Surely you must resent me for all that I have caused,” Lyanna said with a heavy heart. “And now I bring you more trouble, without a doubt.”

Ned shakes his head. “You had no choice in the matter. Rhaegar took you from us.”

Lyanna widens her eyes. Lyanna wishes it were true. She had thought for a moment to close her mouth and let him believe that she had been wronged, taken and defiled. But Lyanna’s conscience tells her better. “You know that’s not true,” she imparts with a somber smile. “I had told you that Rhaegar wedded me, and you believe I was kidnapped?”

“Many marriages occur where the woman is unwilling.” Lyanna could kiss her sweet brother for giving her the benefit of the doubt, but it is already apparent that he does not believe his own words.

“I was willing,” Lyanna admits, her cheeks suffusing red with shame. Ned takes pause at this, though it’s clear in his stormy grey eyes that this was a fact he had come to terms with long ago. He clears his throat and averts his eyes, looking to father beside him.

“Did you love him, at least?” Ned asks of her, and it nearly breaks her heart. “Tell me your feelings were true for him.” What a demand! Even her brother must have known that love did not excuse the storm that uprooted Westeros.

“At the start. I loved him with all my heart at the start,” she confesses, though it disgusts her. “He did not kidnap me. He did not rape me. I was a foolish girl, and he was all I wanted.” Her eyes tilt up to Brandon’s emotionless face again. “But I did not want this. I never wanted to start a war. I never wanted anyone to die. I wanted to be happy.”

“Were you happy?”

“No,” Lyanna admits with shame. “After they died, and before Jon was born, I did not know a moment of joy nor did I know the will to live. I feel as if the gods mocked me by giving me Jon and my life. I did not deserve the purpose he gives me.” She gives a shaky sigh, expelling the last of her mourning. “I am filled with nothing but regret and longing and love for my son. It is that love that saves me.”

“To live for one’s son is an honorable thing,” Ned tells her, and it is clear in his voice that he speaks out of experience. “I had always thought you would make for a good mother.”

Lyanna cannot help but smile at this, though she tries to hide it by biting her lip. “That is the greatest compliment, dearest brother,” she says breathlessly. “I have returned here to be a better mother. Jon asks questions about his family. I brought him here so he may have a proper one.” Tears sting her eyes, but they do not spill. “I am not enough for him, it seems. I suppose all sons need more than their mothers.” Her gaze goes sideways, to peer at the other tombs down the hall. “Is Benjen here?” she asks, a question that she had been afraid to ask.

“He is alive at the Wall. He took the black shortly after the war,” Ned informs her.

Lyanna raises her brows. “I admit that I’m surprised. But that is good to hear.” Using Brandon’s knee as support, she rises to her feet again. “He had always been honorable.” Benjen, little Ben who swore to keep her secrets until his dying breath, who held her hand when they walked in darkness, who always covered up the bruises her sticks gave him so father would see, and so that she could continue training. Good, reliable, understanding Benjen.

“Lyanna,” Ned says her name as with caution, as if it were something to fear. “Lyanna, we must tell Robert that you are here.”

The name of the man she sought to escape crashes in her ears, and she is quickly filled with spite. “Why would we ever want to do that?” she asks with narrowed eyes and balled fists.

“He would not have fought that war had it not been for the chance that you would return,” Ned tells her with sudden fervor. She nearly forgot how much Ned loved him. “Don’t be cruel, Lya. He was heartbroken when I told him that you were dead. He loves you still; you owe him the chance to see you again.”

Her blood is boiling hot in these cold crypts. “I owe him nothing!” she exclaims, and she feels as if motionless Brandon supports in this. “Robert is an arrogant fool. He is part of the reason I left Winterfell. I don’t care if he loves me; I shall not see him!”

“And what if he comes to visit Winterfell? Shall I hide you away?” he asks this with an edge of exasperation, as if in few moments he may shake her and jar some sense into her.

“I shall hide myself,” Lyanna insists with fervor. “I don’t want to see him.”

“Please, Lyanna,” Ned begs, his shoulders slumping. “He is married now. He won’t do anything to you. He has children.”

“Does he love his wife and keep to her bed?” Lyanna asks cruelly. “Or does he have bastards from one end of Westeros to the other?” Ned is silent; Lyanna knew this was simply a refusal to admit to the truth. “The only good thing Robert had ever done for me was kill Rhaegar,” she admits with vitriol. “Are you asking me to thank him?”

“No, Lyanna. Just see him. Let him know you’re alive.”

Lyanna takes pause before speaking. She wraps her arms around herself protectively, guarding herself. “I have not forgotten what he did to Elia and the children. Slaughtered and defiled because they were unlucky enough to be relations of a Targaryen; and Robert did not give them justice." Elia had been raped before she was killed but not before her babes were murdered before her eyes. Or so the knights had told her; they had said this to her in order to frighten her and persuade her to go with them. It did frighten her, but it only served to drive her away quicker and alone. "As much as I wish it weren't so, my son is a Targaryen. What guarantee do I have that my son will survive his visit?" This was the important question. Jon's safety and well-being ranked higher than anything else.

"He will not harm him," Ned says quickly. "He is still your son, and Robert loves you. No man could look into your son's face and see Rhaegar." Lyanna begged to differ. That was all she saw.

"Appearances will not save him. Robert hates Rhaegar still, does he not?"

"For what he did to you, yes."

“What he _thought_ he did to me. It is the only story people know now.” She had been incensed when she learned that kidnapping and rape had been her official story. Part of her fury went to the men who began it, and to the man who did nothing to deny it.

“I would not suggest telling him that truth,” Ned says with warning. “Though to hear about Jon’s origins from your lips shall make him sympathetic to him. He is a good man, Lyanna.” She hated how he spoke so hopefully, on the verge of begging. It wasn't fair at all.

"You give me more power than I have," Lyanna remarks bitterly.

"You do not know how he feels for you," Ned says mournfully. "When I told him you were dead, he broke. I swear, Lyanna, the man broke. He loves you."

"He loves what he remembers of me," Lyanna corrects him. "He loves whatever he made up about me."

"Regardless, Lyanna," Ned sighs, shaking his head. "There is more to his visit than you may know. Sooner or later, the word will get out that you are here with a boy that you have claimed is your son. When left to their own imaginations, I do not doubt that more than a few will understand that it is Rhaegar's son you have brought with you. It is dangerous to be a Targaryen." Lyanna winces at this. Why should anyone think him a Targaryen? He was hers. He was whatever he wanted to be. "Robert is a king with many strings that he may pull. He has that damned Spider to do his bidding; with the right words in the right ears, you may tell him what you wish to said about your son. The whispers cannot be controlled, but their content can."

Lyanna muses at this. She could think of so many excuses that would not include Rhaegar. She could tell Robert that her womb would not take Rhaegar's seed, and to have it said that a man in Pentos had gotten him on her when she was drunk; there would be no honorable story to tell, but her honor was a small price to pay for her son's safety.

"Does he truly love me enough to do me this favor?" Lyanna asks with caution, wrapping her arms around herself, setting up a guard. "He cares enough for me to protect my son, a child he has more than a single reason to despise?"

"He is your only chance," Ned tells her. "Should the matter be left alone, people shall make their own assumptions."

 _I am the woman Rhaegar defiled,_ she reminded herself of Westeros's history. _I am the one he had raped hundreds of times._ It was wrong, so very far from the truth, but it was what was written in the books. Why not have it written that his seed would not quicken in her womb? Or that it had, once, but it fell from her womb? Perhaps she left to Pentos in fear for her life, for what others would say about her. Perhaps she left because Westeros was too painful. And perhaps she did get very drunk in Pentos one night and found herself in the arms of a dashing Bravoosi, who left her before morning with his seed in her womb and an overwhelming shame.

They were all safer than being Rhaegar Targaryen's only living son.

"Very well," Lyanna hears herself rasp. "Invite him here. We shall see the strength of his love for me. But should Robert refuse to help, that something should happen to Jon..."

"Nothing will," Ned insists, but Lyanna does not listen.

"If any harm comes to him, I will kill Robert in his sleep." Lyanna meets Ned's eye to see it flash with surprise. “I allow Robert’s visit in hopes that it will keep Jon safe. Should your trust in him be unfounded, dearest brother, I cannot be held responsible for what I may do.”

Ned nods. “I assure you, he will be good.”

Lyanna looks to Brandon again, and wonders what he would suggest.


	3. III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyanna meets Robert again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy!

When Robert passes through the gates of Winterfell, Lyanna cannot bring herself to kneel.

Of course, it was customary that once the King was announced, that all dropped to one knee and bowed in the sight of their ruler. Lyanna knew it was coming as she heard his procession come riding in, the sound of creaking wheels and clopping horses reminding her to be alert and ready. But Lyanna did not leave Westeros so she may bend the knee to a King.

Her son Jon watched as others dropped to their knees around them, but glanced up at his mother standing tall and stood with her. Lyanna was proud to see it; Pentos was a place where no one kneeled to anyone else, and it was part of the reason why she chose it for Jon, who would grow to learn that everyone was equal. There were no kings and queens, only officials and the wealthy, but the common rabble did not bend the knee for them. Thus, Lyanna would not kneel, and Jon would not either.

A part of her knew that it only called attention to her and that it will be whispered wildly about as soon as she was out of earshot, but it mattered not. Her standing straight was both a lesson and a statement.

The crowd parts as horns are blown, and Robert finally comes in sight. He is tall upon his horse, dressed in steel armor with a stag filigreed in gold on the breastplate, and seeming a true giant upon his mount. For a moment he seems as Lyanna remembered him from him youth: tall and mighty, with strong, handsome features, those blue eyes laughing. But the image fades as quickly as it appears when Robert dismounts. He is still tall, all six and a half feet, but wider too, particularly around his middle. His broad shoulders did not taper down to a slim waist as she recalled, but instead were met with the beginnings of a belly. Robert was not exactly fat, as a shadow of the lean man of his youth could still be seen, but it seemed that he would get there soon. There is a beard upon his face, cropped short, which is also a new sight. She only ever remembered him being clean-shaven.

Lyanna thinks his eyes might bore harshly into her for her insolence in the matter of her refusal to kneel, but instead she is met with soft blue pools and furrowed brows. Oh, but the way he looked was as if they were the only two in this bustling courtyard, and it serves to infuriate her. He walks straight to her, and in the silence all that could be heard were his massive footsteps and clanging armor. Once he reaches her, he takes pause, unsure of what to say.

Blue eyes search her face as a gloved hand hovers by her cheek. Lyanna looks up and boldly meets his gaze, trying not to seem so small despite hardly reaching his chin. For a moment he thinks he might touch her, a thought that frightens her.

"I thought you would be a corpse," Robert finally murmurs. "But here I find you. And you're alive." The words are breathless coming out of his mouth, disbelief and confusion at war. "Gods be good, you're alive," he repeats, and the slightest smile appears on his face. Lyanna offers no words. Robert then blinks, as if falling out of a dream, and looks around to his subjects still kneeling. "Rise, damn it all!" he exclaims, seemingly frustrated, but when his gaze returns to her it is soft and kind. "I had thought never to see you again." He reaches out, perhaps to touch a lock of her hair, but Lyanna sharply pulls away.

"Your grace," Ned's voice calls from somewhere besides her, saving her from Robert's amorous looks. "It is good to see you again, and so soon."

Robert blinks, then grins at his friend. "Aye, it's hardly been a year, hasn't it, since those damned Greyjoys?" Lyanna's eyes cannot help but flit to young Theon, whose head is bowed, his gaze fixed on his boots. "Come here, Ned!" The two embrace as brothers, as she recalled they did when Robert had come to Winterfell to ask for her hand, and when they met again at the Tourney at Harrenhal.

Robert spends some time greeting Ned's children, tousling Robb's hair, and giving Sansa and Arya pecks on the cheek, but he coldly pays no mind to Theon, who still looked to the ground. Then, it happened: his eyes find Jon beside her, and Lyanna gives his hand a firm squeeze. There is confusion first, then a flash of recognition.

"This one's a Stark," Robert says flatly. Then his gaze travels back up to Lyanna, and she tenses. "He's not...?" His eyes widen, and then narrow, turning venomous as they fixed on her son. Unable to bear such a dastardly glance, Lyanna speaks for the first time.

"Robert, we must speak," she says through gritted teeth, doing away with titles and formality.

"Aye, I think we should," Robert agrees with an edge of caution. Ned offers to open his solar to accommodate them, which Lyanna swiftly accepts, much preferring the large solar to the intimacy of a bedroom. Jon hangs onto her skirts when she tries to leave, but Lyanna knows better than to bring him with her.

"Go with Robb, little one, mama shall be with you soon," she tells him with a tight smile before following Robert's broad back indoors and into the solar. When the door closes behind them, Robert reaches for the clasps on his armor and begins to noisily pulling it off, dropping each piece to the ground with a loud clang. Neither of them spoke as he did this, but a thought had passed over Lyanna: _He still puts himself first._

When it's all off, he rolls his shoulders, bones cracking as he did so. "Armor weighs on you if you wear it too long," he mumbles. "And the road here is so damned long." Then his eyes rise to her, as if just noticing her presence. "By the gods, I had missed you," he confessed with raw emotion, his eyes glossing over. “Why did you leave?”

“I was afraid,” Lyanna says, beginning with a truth. “The knights at the tower would not tell me who won the war. I feared that it was Rhaegar who won, and I fled so I would not become his queen.” A lie. She fled because she did not wish to receive the same treatment as Elia. But Robert didn’t have to know that.

Robert narrows his eyes at Rhaegar’s mention, but nods, accepting the story. Then he sighed a forlorn sigh, and said, "I dream of you-"

"How is your wife?" Lyanna cuts in coldly, unwilling to hear his sweet words. "Ned tells me you've wed a Lannister." Just mentioning the name strikes fear into her as she recalls Elia Martell's fate. It was Tywin who had her and children killed, Elia raped, and it was Robert who condoned it.

Robert grumbles, evidently upset by the reminder. He falls into Ned's chair, slumping in it. Lyanna could see the buttons on his doublet strain against his expanding middle. "Cersei," he hisses the name with obvious bitterness. "You'd hate her, Lyanna. She's so damned stiff and cold. She doesn't know how to have fun, and all she does is complain."

"You have a son," Lyanna says, still trying to get him to find something positive beside her.

"And another babe on the way." He grimaces, clearly not proud. He props the heels of his boots on a chest on the side of the desk, and then takes his chin in his hand. “That boy in the courtyard,” Robert begins with caution. Lyanna braces herself to speak the words she had recited in her head night after night. “Is he yours?”

Lyanna nods. “He is mine.”

She can saw his square jaw set. “Who’s the father?” Lyanna does not reply. She presses her lips into a tight line and tries to look at his hands instead of his eyes. “Rhaegar?” he asks, and it is the most venomous she’d ever heard his name said.

“Aye,” she whispers back. She sees his fingers curls around the edges of the arms of the chair, and with any more force he might have torn them right off.

“And you _kept_ it?” he growls, incredulous. Lyanna did not look to his face and bit her tongue when she wished to correct him ( _’him’, not ‘it’_ ). “That monster raped you, locked you away, and you keep the dragonspawn he forced into you?” She kept staring at his hands and the whitening knuckles, too fearful of what she might say if she looked at his angry face.

“It is no fault of Jon’s that-“

“Jon?!” he shouts as a curse, suddenly getting to his feet. “You name a bastard born of rape _Jon_?!” She lowers her eyes to his boot, setting her jaw when he pulls himself to his full height as he looms over her.

“I did not meant it as an insult to Jon Arryn,” Lyanna tells him stiffly. “I kept the boy because he was a babe and part Stark. He cannot be blamed for what his father did. He is only a child.”

Robert was doing what he did when he approached her at Harrenhal with curses for Rhaegar when he gave her a crown of flowers. His presence hung heavy over her, trying to crush and belittle her, but Lyanna was stronger than that. She stood her ground, and then dared to raise her head to look him in the face.

“I could not have very well left him to die, Robert,” she tells him evenly, hoping to soften his inflamed temper. It does so, but only by some. His shoulders relax, but his hands remain curled into menacing fists.

“You could have dropped it at the door of a sept and let someone else take care of it,” Robert insists, clearly above killing babes. “You didn’t have to do anything for it. That son of a whore forced it on you.”

“I could never have forgiven myself if I left him,” Lyanna says quietly. “I held him for nine moons’ turns in my belly; my honor would not have allowed me to forsake him, how little of it I had left after Rhaegar.” This was the truth, though applied in a different context than what Robert imagined.

His jaw loosens again, and some fire is snuffed from it. Some, but not all. “Damn you Starks and your honor,” he grumbles spitefully, but it is in a way that implied envy. “You didn’t have to do shit for the boy.”

“I choose to do shit for the boy, my lord,” Lyanna says through gritted teeth. “I have raised him myself for seven years and I do not regret a minute. He is my life and love. I would bleed for him.” _And I would bleed others,_ she wanted to add.

“I don’t understand it,” Robert grumbles, shaking his head and sneering. “I don’t understand it.”

“I am begging you to understand, as I need your help in protecting him,” Lyanna reveals, trying to soften her temper to appeal to Robert.

“Protect him? You’re asking me to protect Rhaegar’s bastard son?” he asks, incredulous and nearly livid again.

“I am asking you to protect _my_ bastard son,” she retorts with passion. “Though you may not understand it, I love my son with all my heart. And though he is no Targaryen in my eyes, I cannot have others thinking so.” Lyanna reaches out, brushing a finger on his chest. “It is dangerous to be a Targaryen. I need you to keep this secret for me.”

“What if he tries to steal my throne?” Robert asks, sparing a glance to her hand. “Your boy looks older than mine.”

“He shall not touch your throne; this, I can promise. He only wants to live happily, and in peace.”

Robert sighs bitterly. “And how should I help you do this?”

“You must spread a story for me. Tell it to your Master of Whisperers, write it, announce it, use whatever outlet you may, but I cannot have anyone thinking he is a Targaryen, even if he is the bastard son of one.” Lyanna pauses, licks her lips, then looks down to his boot again. “I do not doubt that many have whispered that he is Rhaegar’s seed by now. I do not have many resources to silence them; I need yours.”

Robert remains silent, perhaps awaiting an explanation. Lyanna’s heart begins to thump wildly against her chest, elated at being offered what seemed to be a chance. She looks up into his face again and begins to speak in quivering tones. “Jon is seven years of age, but it must be said that he is six, too young to be sired by Rhaegar. I fled Westeros because none at the tower in Dorne would tell me who won the war; I was afraid to become Rhaegar’s queen, and I went to Pentos. There I got drunk, and I met man, and he put his seed in me and I had borne a son nine moons after. He is a bastard of Essos, not Westeros.” By the end of her fabrication, Lyanna finds herself trembling. Robert continues to pin her with a dark gaze, but doesn’t speak, only looks and looks. “Shall I write it down for you? I think I shall. That would be best.” Her speech was growing fast and anxious as she pulled a loose piece of parchment from Ned’s desk and wrote the story down in jittery handwriting. Afterward, she blew on it, trying to quicken the ink’s drying, and folds it, pushing it out to Robert.

Robert eyes the paper, then takes it gingerly between his index finger and thumb. He opens it, scans it, closes it again. He opens his mouth, and Lyanna begins to feel her chest tighten, expecting a response in the positive. “I require something in return.”

Her heart stops and all noise seem to flee from her ears in a sharp rush of air. Lyanna licks her lips, and tries to swallow the lump in her throat. “What do you want?” she asks with anxiety.

“You,” he says. “Us. It’s not too late. Marry me, Lyanna, as we were meant to be.”

Lyanna lets out a short, dry laugh, thinking that perhaps he was joking. One look into the intense blues of his eyes tells her he’s not. Her laugh dies on her lips. “I cannot,” she murmurs, quietly at first. “I cannot,” she repeats, but louder this time.

“That is my condition; you may take it and have your story, or you may refuse me and receive nothing.” Such cruelty! Had Lyanna not been made of sterner stuff she might have swooned.

“I cannot do this; Robert, it is madness. You are already married and the Lannisters will not take well to such a slight-“

“Damn the Lannisters!” he exclaims, crushing the paper in his hand. “Damn my lady wife too and her babes; I want none of that. You’re back and I want you.” These words are familiar to her somehow, but in a pleasant way.

“But Jon, I cannot leave Jon…” Her head swims with thoughts, of thoughts of her son, of wondering what he would do if she married Robert, if he would come or stay, if the kingdom will bleed again for her.

“I’ll take your boy and give him my name too, if it please you,” Robert returns fiercely, not willing to back down.

“But then that will oust Cersei’s son,” Lyanna mumbles, largely to the space beside Robert’s head. “She will not take kindly to that. She’ll have him killed. She’ll-“ She gasps, the idea hitting her chest with the force of a sack of grain. “I cannot do this, Robert, I cannot.”

“Then I promise nothing.” He balls up the paper and tosses it to Ned’s desk. He turns his broad back on her. “For your sake, I’ll keep your secret. But I’ll not help you hide it.”

Then an idea comes to her. Desperately, she clutches his arm, and he turns around to face her again. “I will give you my body,” she announces breathlessly and unabashed. “I have not laid with a man in seven years; I am just as good as maid.”

Robert grimaces, the offer not pleasing him. He reaches for her hand on his arm, holding it gingerly. “I have not forgotten my promise to you,” he says in a low voice. “I promised I wouldn’t lay with you ’til our wedding night all those years ago, and I plan to keep that promise. I won’t use you like a whore as that bastard Rhaegar did. I’ll have you with honor.” Then he lifts her knuckles to his lips and presses a light kiss to them, the barest whisper.

“Honor!” she exclaims with a short and bitter laugh. “Robert Baratheon speaks to me about honor!” She pulls her hand away from his grasp, snarling as she did. She notes that he raises his brows in muted contempt, and Lyanna reverses, trying to be soft and sweet again, though her voice and body trembled madly. “I will do anything. I will do whatever you want me to do; only I will not marry you. It is not worth it, to evoke the Lannisters’ ire over me.” Her voice grew higher and thinner with each passing word as tremors rocked her whole body. She was fearful, fearful for Jon, fearful for herself. “I am dishonored. I am nothing. Cersei is beautiful and I am plain-“

“The Others take Cersei Lannister,” he hisses with real bitterness. “I’ve been wanting to annul that damned marriage since it happened. And now you’re here, and you’re what I want. I love you, and I want to marry you, damn it!”

“I cannot!” she cries out, digging the heels of her hands in her eyes. “I cannot do it. I will not do it.” Not another war, not her heart and sanity on the line again, not fear for Jon’s wellbeing. _Not again, not again._

“Then I’ll let the kingdom think what they may about your boy,” he says sharply, before turning and exiting the solar.

Even as he left Lyanna whispered “I cannot”.

* * *

She finds Ned in the corridor leading to his bedchambers. He makes no noise of surprise when she touches his shoulder, but he turns sharply, pinning her with cautious eyes before he realized who she was.

“Lya,” he murmurs. “We missed you at supper.” She had skipped it to avoid Robert.

“How long is Robert staying?” is the further thing she asks.

“A fortnight,” he tells her. Something in her face seemed to alarm him, as he extends a hand, placing it on her arm. “What troubles you?”

“Robert wants me to marry him,” she blurts out, unable to keep it in any longer. Just saying it terrifies her. “He wants to annul his marriage to Cersei.”

Ned’s eyes widen. “You must refuse him.”

“He said he won’t help tell my story unless I marry him,” Lyanna continues. She feels her heart become heavier in her chest, sinking, sinking. “He said he won’t tell any one of Jon’s father, but will not keep other tongues from wagging unless we are wed.” Nausea washes over her, but she forces it away.

Ned parts his lips, perhaps shocked. He blinks, then turns his head away from her, eyes somewhere far in the distance. “That is the only option?” he asks, sounding very distant.

“I offered him everything. He would not take it.” Not even her body, the one he would eye with such shameless lust in yesteryears, was enough to sway him. “He said he would take an honorable coupling or none at all. Ned, you must speak to him.”

Ned grimaces. “The man has only grown more stubborn since you’ve seen him last, Lyanna,” he tells her with dismay. “He’s grown more stubborn since _I’ve_ seen him last.”

“You must try!” she calls out, her voice suddenly gaining vigor and volume. Upon seeing Ned’s shocked reaction, paired with eyes checking to see that no one woke, Lyanna abates once more. “You must try. I don’t want to leave, Ned, not yet.” Her eyes drift from his face to a spot on the floor as a recent memory washed over her. “I brought Jon here to have a family. Is that so wrong?”

“No, Lya.”

“I have missed so much already. He took his first steps while I was tending to horses. He said his first word to a tavern maid who watched him for a night.” The memories are bitter on her tongue, and shameful, so shameful. Yes, it was a sacrifice she made to support her son, but it felt as if it were an unfair trade. “I don’t want to miss things anymore. I don’t want him to be lonely either.”

Night after night she left him sleeping in their bed as she worked into the early hours of the morning; sometimes she came home and he was already awake, sitting around their room and making his own entertainment. It broke her heart each time.

“When we slept in my room here that first night, he had sat up in bed and gasped suddenly. He said ‘mama’-“ Her throat burns with the need to sob, but she swallowed and continued. “‘Mama, look at all the books’. It was only my bookshelf, Ned, with no more than twenty books. I told him to sleep, and in the morning he may read them. That’s all he does every night: read. Such a lonely hobby for a little boy. I took him to the library at Winterfell, and I thought his face would tear with how wide he was smiling. He said to me… He said…” Her mouth went dry. She gripped her skirts with both hands and bowed her head, forcing the words out of her blistering throat. “‘There’s enough books to swim in’. Oh, Ned, I don’t want to disappoint him now. I can’t take him back now, not when he’s so happy. But if Robert cannot listen…”

Then it was a return to Pentos and work and loss and loneliness.

“I will speak with him,” Ned said assuringly, touching her shoulder. “I’ll not have you leave.”

“Thank you, Ned,” she says in a small voice. “I don’t want to leave either.”

_By the gods, I cannot leave yet._


	4. IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyanna makes her decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy!

Lyanna stood in front of the looking-glass and stared.

For the past week, it had been nothing but avoidance; ducking behind walls and counters, slipping quickly past doorways, never showing up for supper. All of this to avoid Robert. But the times she did fall into his field of vision, he’d pin her with a smoldering stare, and a glint in his eyes that continued to urge her into thinking that it was not too late to change her mind.

All the while, whispers spread and burned like wildfire. She’d hear them in the hallways, tittered by serving maids, seared into her skin through stares of disdain, and she could hear it, yes she could hear _his_ name, Rhaegar, Rhaegar…

Time did little to ease her apprehension. If anything, it heightened it. Thoughts of marriage to Robert, the man she sought to escape so many years ago, frightened her in too many ways. It would be another clip of her wings, another chain around her neck, and she would be subject to those large, rough hands that didn’t know tenderness. She dreamt of vipers crawling on her skin, biting and nipping, each one emblazoned with the words _King’s Landing_ across their scaly lengths. Then, a more horrifying thought: her belly swollen with the quickened seed of a Baratheon.

And Jon! Poor Jon. The only options would be to keep him nestled in the North, so far apart from her, or to bring him South with her and subject him to the perpetual threat of assassination. There had to be a better way, there simply _had_ to be…

Lyanna looked at her skin. It was of the palest ivory, soft and bright, but not unblemished. Across the bridge of her nose was a generous sprinkling of brown freckles, which also can be found on her back and arms. She had grey eyes that were often described as _iosre_ \- cold, spoken in Valyrian by both Rhaegar and the men in Pentos. Rhaegar had said it with affection, often murmuring it into her ear. _Leos iosre._ Cold eyes. Lyanna had always thought them to be cold like steel, yet they never seemed to cut anyone. She had red lips and chestnut curls that she had shorn when she first moved to Pentos; now they reached past her back. Jon loved her hair; he would fist it in his small hand and burrow his nose in it, inhaling her scent.

Rhaegar had liked her hair too, but Lyanna preferred not to remember.

Her body was slender, but not in the supple way men liked. It was lean and hard with muscle, the product of relentless riding as a girl and then demanding work as a woman. She had small breasts to fit that less-than-sumptuous figure; even when they had become swollen with milk, they did not fill Rhaegar’s large hands.

Hands. Lyanna looked down to hers, but did not flinch at the sight. Hard, milky callouses were set on her fingertips and the tops of her palms. The lines of her hand were filled with a pale shade of yellow, and they often peeled. They were not a woman’s hands, certainly not a lady’s hands, and could never be a queen’s hands. They were working hands that had adapted to gripping ropes and leather, of bleaching and dyeing, and later of lathering over and over.

Men in Pentos had called her beautiful, yet Lyanna could not see it. In the looking-glass she saw a woman with a boyish body and a long, childish face. Her eyes were harsh and her freckles were plenty and her hands were ugly. But beauty, or her lack thereof, was inconsequential; if this was the price she had to pay in order to keep herself and her son alive, then so be it.

She wished Robert could see her as she saw herself. Perhaps then he’d leave her alone.

With a sigh, she walked to her writing desk, and slipped into the chair. She pulled a fresh sheet of parchment and a pen. She did not write much; just a handful of words, the bare minimum to bring the message across.

When she went to supper that night, she pressed it into his palm.

“This is your answer?” he asked with narrowed eyes.

Lyanna does not answer; she turns and walks away from him.

* * *

Jon slept in her bed. He did this every night, and has done it every night since he was born. It was a habit he had yet to break upon coming to Winterfell. Though Ned offered both the extra bed in Robb’s room and a whole new bedchamber just for him, Jon did not want it. He seemed to find comfort in sleeping at his mother’s side, and Lyanna did not object.

She held him with his back to her chest, wrapped in her arms. He did not yet fall asleep, though she knew he would soon. For now, Lyanna buried her nose in his neck and breathed him in.

“Mhysa,” Jon whispered in Valyrian, in the tongue that only the two of them knew in Winterfell. Whenever they wished to share secrets or speak privately in front of others, the two spoke in the tongue they learned together in Essos.

“Yes, my love?” she answered back in the same language.

“You’re sad,” he said plain as day; Lyanna was struck by his sharpness, as she always was.

“Just a little,” she answered with a soft smile. “Tell me something, little one. Would you miss me were I to go?”

This startles him. He turns in her arms, pinning her with wide grey eyes. “Go? Go where?”

“Somewhere far away, without you.” The words alone were enough to put a lump in her throat.

“You can’t go,” he insists with a sudden fierceness. “You can’t go without me. I want to come too.”

“What if it’s dangerous? What if you could get hurt if you go?”

Jon shook his head vigorously. “I want to come anyway. I don’t care.”

“But don’t you like it here? Don’t you like Jon and Sansa and little Arya? Uncle Ned and Aunt Cat are so kind to you. Don’t you want to stay?”

He hesitates, mulling those words over. “I want to stay,” he says reluctantly. “But you have to stay too.”

“Do you want to cross the sea again, little one?” she asks, referring to Pentos.

“No,” he says with a quivering lip. “No, I like it here. Please stay.”

“Sweet child,” she murmured somberly before pressing a kiss to his forehead. How could she hold his need for a family against him? She saw how he played with Jon and how he held Sansa’s hand and covered Arya’s face with kisses. She saw his delight when he watched Ned in the training yard with the master-at-arms, the two swinging swords and parrying. Jon belonged here, and so did she. She wanted to stay too.

“You can’t leave me,” he whispers in return, his little hands clinging to the front of her dress with a trembling ferocity. “I love you, mhysa.”

“I love you too, little one. I shan’t go anywhere without you.”

Within the hour his grip loosened as he drifted off to sleep. Lyanna carefully slipped out of the bed and his grasp, but not before pressing a kiss to his temple. She pulled on a pair of shoes, adjusted her dress, and exited the room, slowly, carefully shutting the door behind her.

She followed a path she had followed before. Her feet still remembered it; a walk down the hall, down the stairs, through the darkest parts of the castle and night until she was under the cover of the godswood. Only a few more minutes and she would reach the heart tree, where she had met a silver prince there before.

There was no silver prince there tonight. Only a king.

Robert moved as if to walk to her, but Lyanna halted him with a command: “Stop.”

He obeyed, and paused in his steps.

“Step underneath the heart tree again,” she continued, looking as he step backwards until he stepped into a spot illuminated by the moonlight just so. It all seemed to fall together after that. The reflection pool sparkled, the crimson leaves of the tree seemed to regain their color despite the darkness, and all looked beautiful, magical, faerie-like. Even Robert looked handsome, standing so tall and fierce, square jaw sharp, polished sapphires cutting into her with mighty intensity. The bulge of his middle was kindly softened as well.

She was glad he dressed simply. Only a yellow doublet over a plain white blouse, paired with beige trousers and tall boots. Around his shoulders was a cloak, and though it could not be fully seen, Lyanna had no doubt it was black and gold and adorned with stags.

“Good,” she whispered, her voice carrying like bells through the trees. “You brought the cloak.”

“It’s what you said in the note,” Robert said in return. This was true. _Meet me underneath the heart tree. Bring a cloak._ Lyanna nods.

“I want you to listen to everything I say,” she said, taking a hesitant step forward. “Stand tall, my lord. It suits you better.” He quickly straightens his back, pulling himself to full height. He tucks his hands behind his back, looking very much a soldier. “Good. Now imagine that there are horses behind you; you cannot see them, my lord, but you can hear them. There are four.” In her memory, she could hear them whinny in the background, somewhere in the darkness. “One for you, three for the men who came with you. They are tall, and strong like you, but they wear armor. They came to witness what you had prepared.” She omits the detail that they wear all white, with nothing emblazoned on the breastplate, and that their steel is scaled and beautiful. “Say that you have been waiting for me,” she urges him softly. He blinks to her, clearly befuddled, but gathers his wits in time.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said in his deep, mighty drawl. Nothing like Rhaegar’s rich, silvery tones, but his have their own appeal.

Lyanna steps closer, slowly nearing him. She walks carefully, light upon her feet, stepping wherever there was light. “Say that you love me. That you missed me, and you want me,” she breathed, hoping for the words to transfer effortlessly to his tongue. They do.

“I love you. I missed you. I want you.” There is a marked lacked of poeticism about him, but she expected no different. Robert was never any good with words.

“Me too, my lord. Me too.” She has reached him, standing before him now. Her hands went to his, clasping his rough fingers in between her own. “Ask me to marry you,” she urges softly, tilting her eyes so that they met his. They did not enchant her as Rhaegar’s did, but the opposite now seemed true. Robert looked upon her, smoldering, eager, amazed.

“Marry me, Lyanna Stark,” he murmurs, his eyes leaving hers to wander down to her lips.

“But you’re married, my lord, and you have children,” she hears herself echoing the words from years past. She opens her mouth to coach him on what to say, but Robert’s own emotions catch up to him.

“I don’t want any of that,” he insists with vehemence. “I want you and only you. I’ve waited so long for you.”

“And now I am here,” she says with a squeeze of his fingers. “Let us say the words. You remember them still, don’t you?”

“Aye,” Roberts rasps quickly. “Aye, I remember.” There was an anxiousness about him that mirrored her own. Her heart beat madly against her chest, blood rushing to the very tips of her fingers. She wondered if Robert felt it, all of those forces inside her battling for attention.

Together, they speak: “Father, Smith, Warrior, Mother, Maiden, Crone, Stranger.”

Then Robert speaks alone: “I am hers and she is mine from this day until the end of my days,” he spoked with tenderness, but his eyes continued to burn. Lyanna knew she was to say it too, but her voice betrayed her then. She hoped he would continue without her; he doesn’t. He waits.

“I am his and he is mine,” Lyanna finally whispers. “From this day until the end of my days.”

She did not hesitate when she said it to Rhaegar. The thought makes her want to cry.

Instead she turns around for him, her eyes and throat burning as he rests the cloak that was about his shoulders onto her own. It a formidable weight; the cloak is made from a heavy fabric, though the outside felt as smooth as silk. Robert’s hand rests on her shoulder and whirls her around, before he takes her into his chest and kisses her hard on the mouth. She is taken aback at first, unsure of how to respond. She hadn’t kissed a man in years and years, and she hadn’t kissed Robert for longer than that. But like an old song whose words are slowly remembered, Lyanna recalls what she is expected to do.

Her hands lay flat on his chest, and for a moment she melts into his mouth and forgets, all while relishing the feel of his hands on her waist. She thinks she might not pull away, though he tasted of a sour wine, which Lyanna had never been fond of. But the liplock does end, and Robert looks to her for more.

“You must take the cloak off my shoulders and lay it on the ground,” Lyanna breathes once her wits come to her. He obeys, and roughly removes the weight from her shoulders before draping it on the ground. The yellows of the cloak seem to shine in the light like gold, not like the rubies of a cloak from times past. “I am slow to remember how to do what’s next, my lord,” she hears herself murmuring to the cloak on the floor. Robert’s hand touches the side of her face, turning so that she would meet those sultry eyes again. “I am… I’m not…” She feels herself shedding the last of her restraint. As her arms wrap around his neck, she leans in closer, closer, still locking gazes until their lips meet again.

A hand settles at her back to keep her balance while the other roams, in her hair, down her neck, ’til it settles at her breast and presses. She thinks for a moment that she was not supposed to enjoy his affections, that she was meant to be repulsed and fearful of it, but it seemed her body betrayed her. Her skin warmed readily for him, her back arched into him at each pleasurable touch, and she whines when his hand moves to undo the laces on the back. The dress readily drops from her body, brushing her skin with silky kisses before pooling at her feet.

Something like shame burns within her, but it is a small flame compared to the blaze she felt throughout her body. Without her bidding, her hands move to disrobe him, unfastening his doublet, pulling his blouse off so that they were skin-to-skin, feeling each other in the most intimate way they can. _You’re supposed to hate this, you fool,_ a voice continued to reprimand in her head. _There should be no pleasure in a sacrifice._

But pleasure was all she could focus on; though her cheeks burned with shame, Lyanna reached for his hand, guiding it to in between her legs. She whimpered softly against his lips as his finger brushes over the spot Rhaegar would always forget, and moans when he presses and rubs it.

Her noises seemed to encourage him, as he made quick work at making her wet before easing her back onto the cloak on the ground. When his body leaves hers to lean up and undo his breeches, Lyanna feels the cold air nip at her skin, stinging her. Robert spreads her legs, then slips into her. She pulls his hips to hers, bringing him closer so that she may be warm, and an old dance is remembered when he rocks his hips.

Lyanna's hands twist in his hair, and she burrows her nose in his neck, breathing in his musk of leather and perfume. She finds herself distracted by the subtler details: Robert’s grunts in her ear, his labored breathing leaving the side of her face warm and damp, the feel of the silken cloth beneath her. There was the rustle of the grass, the sound of ravens, and then his kisses, warm and rushed, pressed to her neck and mouth as if they were the last he’d leave in this world. When a wave of pleasure washes over her, her tense muscles loosening at the intensity of it, Lyanna allows herself to make a low moan, which she muffles against his shoulder. Then in a few quick strokes, a heat surges inside her, and Robert groans “Lyanna”.

Then it is all done. He rolls off her, falling into his back, and the sound of his panting begins to dwindle. Though her body feels heavy, Lyanna anxiously turns to lay her head on his chest, sighing when his hand rests on the small of her back. “Ned spoke to you, I hope?” she asks, murmuring the words against his salty skin.

“Aye,” is all he can manage in response. Lyanna’s finger traces patterns on the soft flesh of his stomach, finding it is not so bad.

“Then you understand that we cannot be married before the realm?”

There is hesitation, then a grunt. “Aye,” he says again. “But say the word, and I would have you be my wife before all seven kingdoms.”

“I know,” Lyanna whispers in response, finding his devotion nearly admirable. “But you know it is not worth it. Your kingdom had only just begun to cease bleeding. You are a wise king.”

A silence settles between them. Lyanna thought to thank her brother when she had the chance; Ned did have a way of being incessant to the point of concession, and it seemed that whatever he had said to Robert worked. She was glad; she did not want to start another war.

“What you said about the horses and men,” Robert asks, interrupting her thoughts. Lyanna blinks, then tilts her head up to see that he is smiling. “What was that all about?”

Lyanna nearly laughs. She wondered how he would react if she told him that she had done this before, almost just like this. A sharper man might have understood that all she had done was recreate the past; fortunately for her, Robert was too much a fool to make such connections.

“I like to pretend,” she only says, before pressing her cheek to his chest again. She hears Robert chuckle, but it dies quickly. The air suddenly seemed more tense than it was moments ago, and Robert’s hand slides up to the back of her neck.

“Come south with me,” Robert says suddenly, interrupting her thoughts. “I’ll set you up nicely down there. Your own chambers, servants waiting on you every second of every day- Gods, bring your boy too, and I’ll have him set up there with you.”

“No,” Lyanna blurts out before thinking. “No, Robert, I cannot. They’ll kill me.”

“No one will-“

“Please, Robert, no,” she begs, turning from underneath his arm to prop her forearms on his chest and meet his eye. “I cannot do it. Winterfell is my home.” His lips purse into a thin line. “If you truly want me, you may come north and see me. I’ll gladly you take you into my heart.”

“And come all those damnable miles?“ he says sharply in return.

“Am I not worth it?”

The words strike Robert dumb, but only for a little while.

“You’ll come south with me one day, I swear it,” Robert grumbles, his harshness melting. “You’ll live with me, and when the time is right, I’ll be rid of my wife. I’ll be rid of this damnable gut too, and I’ll be the man you remember. The man you deserve.” His words were fighting words, promises that he may or may not keep. He pulls her down into his arms, nestling his nose in her hair. “I promise, Lyanna, you’ll be mine.”

“I am yours,” she whispers sweetly into his skin. “We made a vow. Or have you forgotten?”

“No, I mean you’ll be _mine_ ,” he says in return, then tightens his embrace.

Lyanna wondered what that meant.


	5. V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyanna's burdens grow heavier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy! and keep in mind my summary... this is NOT a romance.

For the rest of his stay, Lyanna spends her nights in Robert's bed. She waits until Jon is asleep in hers before slipping out, light on her feet, crossing the halls until she found his chambers. A Kingsguard knight had let her in that first night, one she did not recognize, and for every night after. In his bedchambers Robert would kiss her, touch her, fuck her, and fall asleep with his arms around her.

It was not a terrible existence. Though no night was nearly as pleasing as the one in the godswood, his body provided her a small comfort. And even if it didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. She didn’t care for her pleasure. She cared for her son.

And thus, after Robert began his snoring, she would wriggle out of his arms and return to her own bed, where Jon would still be sleeping soundly.

When Robert made to leave at the end of his visit, he tried to kiss her in the courtyard. She turned her head, and his lips brushed her cheek instead. He looked to her with slighted eyes, but did not make a second advance.

“I’ll be back for you, Lyanna,” he said gruffly, then he mounted his horse and left.

As Lyanna watched his broad back disappear into a speck on the horizon, she was left with a strong, hopeful feeling that he would not return.

 _He has taken what he wants,_ she told himself. _He owns me. He’s bedded me. I’m done._ There was no bitterness at this, only acceptance. She knew in her heart of hearts, ever since she was first betrothed, that this was an inherent part of Robert’s personality, a burden for any wife of his to carry. Now on the road back to King’s Landing, he’ll have another ten whores, and the feeling of her body underneath his hands would be fain more than a sweet memory.

But Lyanna was not mournful. He was leaving, perhaps never to return, and she was alone again with Jon. Her false story would be spread, her safety and her kin’s ensured, and now she may live in peace again.

When he disappeared, Lyanna walked to the maester’s solar. He was a wise man by the name of Luwin, aged and honorable, with many links on his maester’s chain. He had apologized profusely for turning her away that first night, and said he was deeply embarrassed. She liked him better than the sour old man from her girlhood.

“Maester Luwin,” she calls out to him. He rose immediately from his seat, giving a bow. “Might you make something for me?”

“What ails you, my lady?” he asks, smiling slightly.

“Nothing yet,” she replies. “It is moon tea I require.”

His smile falters, but his eyes are understanding. “Are you sure, my lady? Moon tea is very powerful.”

“The stronger the better, good maester.”

There were only so many sacrifices she would be willing to make.

* * *

As if gripped by a ghost, Lyanna pressed her back to the warm stone wall in the corridor, and slumps.

A memory washed over her, one with no reason to return, and one she would have rather forgotten. It was a happy memory; she could tell by the way the tips of her fingers tingled and how her chest felt open, exposed, her heart fluttering free.

Rhaegar’s hand wrapped around her ankle, long fingers gingerly holding her foot as if it were a precious talisman. It was early morning, and white light poured through the window above their bed, bathing them both in Dornish sun. He looked beautiful; his silver hair shone as it were spun and polished, his fair skin fairer, and those dark purple eyes looked up to her as if she were something worth looking at.

“Sweet Lyanna,” he murmured in his rich voice, flowing like the mighty river he died in. Even years later, she remembered his voice. “You are beautiful.”

“Truly?” Lyanna asked with rapture, her heart fluttering like a maid’s. She sat up with her back to the headboard, and legs to her chest. “I’m beautiful? But Elia is so much more lovely than I.” And she was. Even when she watched on sadly as Rhaegar crowned Lyanna, Elia was a striking woman, easily the most breath-taking creature Lyanna had ever seen.

He shook his head lazily. “Nay,” he mumbled, still groggy with sleep. “Nay, you are beautiful. The most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

Lyanna had blushed. She blushed that the most gorgeous man in the world had thought her beautiful, that he looked up at her with such wonder and intensity, that his hand gripped her ankle as if he were afraid she would run. Even as he leaned up to kiss her, his hand remained there, fingers locked around her ankle, gripping tighter and tighter until he pulled it backward so she would fall on her back with her legs spread.

Would that she could relive that time again; perhaps then she would ask “why?”.

“Why?” came a woman’s voice from down the hall. Lyanna opens her eyes with a start. “Runnin’ away; ent that foolish, when her brother won the war?” She pokes her head around to corner to see two servant girls on their hands and knees, washing the floors.

“Don’t you understand, foolish girl?” a different, shriller voice responded. “She didn’t know that! Was proper scared, she was in that tower. Didn’t know who won the war, her raper or her brother.” Lyanna's heart quickened; it had been no more than four moons since Robert had left, and already she heard her words on others' lips. It shocked her that it spread so quickly; then again, Ned had once told her that whispers spread faster than wildfire. It was why they left Harrenhal so abruptly.

“Makes sense, I 'spose,” the other one mumbles. "Now who got that boy on her?"

The woman with all the answers pauses in her work, then looks around as if to find any eavesdroppers. Lyanna quickly pulls back around the corner, straining her ear to hear.

"They say 'twas a lover she had in Essos," she whispers none-too-quietly. "One 'o those dashing sort. Loved her for a few nights, then left her with a babe." Not quite as Lyanna transcribed it, but then whispers never were.

The other woman snorts. "I know what that's like," she says in a japing, knowing manner. "Men are filthy creatures."

"Aye," the other one agrees in a similar tone. "Gods keep 'em."

Lyanna began to walk away from the voices, satisfied with what she heard. It seemed to her that her sacrifice had been worth it, and the results swifter than she thought. _All will be well now,_ she tells herself with a smile on her lips. _Now there is only Jon, Winterfell, and peace._

She could tell by the look on Ned’s face that she was wrong.

“Lyanna,” he said softly, meeting her in the den. Lyanna blinks at him, sensing apprehension. “Lyanna, Robert has returned. He won’t be no more than hour now.”

There were no words to describe the sinking feeling in her chest.

“B-But, it’s been five moons,” she nearly sputters. Jon had his eighth nameday in that time, and he had been so terribly joyous- and so was she. “And his wife- didn’t she… Didn’t she give birth not a moon ago?” Yes, she remembered that news reaching her ear. A little princess, they said, yellow-haired and lovely, and they named her Myrcella. Such a sweet name. That should have been enough to keep him away.

Ned can only look at her with remorse. He leans over and kisses her cheek, and murmurs that she ought to get ready.

“Ready for what?” she nearly asked, but she knew what.

Again, she does not kneel when he arrives, though his procession is much smaller than before. There were only four Kingsguard knights and some servants, which Robert at the front. He comes down from his horse and tries to touch her cheek, but she pulls away. Jon was standing beside her. It was better that he didn’t see Robert’s affections.

When he gets her alone, he kisses her. They were in the corridor outside his room, and his strong hands gripping her waist to push her against the wall and kiss her hungrily. Lyanna tasted wine on him, which came as no surprise, but she let him kiss her and push his tongue past her lips. When he pulls away, there is a fire in his eyes, one that surely couple with a heat in his loins.

“Robert,” she murmurs breathlessly. “Robert, you cannot kiss me in front of others.” She thought of his attempted peck in the courtyard when he left five moons ago, and his reaching hand not ten minutes ago. _Jon was standing beside me. I don’t to let him see._

“And why not?” he respond gruffly, unhappy with this stipulation.

Lyanna thinks to tell him it is for Jon, but she knew better than to mention her son. It would only anger him. “We simply cannot be so open about it,” she says instead. “You are the king, the realm knows you’re married to Cersei-“

“You. I’m married to you,” he interrupts strongly, and Lyanna bites back a sigh.

“Yes, my love, but no one knows that.”

“Does Ned know?”

Lyanna nods. She had told him so after Robert had left. Her brother had only looked at her with concern. “We still must practice discretion.”

Robert grimaces, upset at the new condition. Then, as if remembering his purpose for coming, he picks her up off her feet and carries her into his bedchambers.

He makes love to her for another week, and he after that he leaves. In that time, he called her beautiful, lovely, perfect, kissed her throat and made her moan. But when he fell tired and fell asleep, she would slip back to her room, where Jon would wait to burrow in her chest. It was the same as his first visit.

But it isn’t. He was considerably less gentle, his rough hands leaving marks on her hips, his hungry mouth sprinkling purple spots on her throat, and there are bruises on her thighs. Lyanna ties her dresses to her chin, wears sleeves that cover her wrists, red from where his hands clenched them. He loved her, though. He said he loved her. It was how he showed his love, and it was painfully visible.

Again, she hoped he wouldn’t return, and again he came.

It was after three moons, this third visit, and Robert came to her with a request.

It was after supper and he had a little wine in him. She knew because she had sat beside him at supper, and watched as he downed cup after cup. But she also knew because she tasted it on his lips, and the scent clung to him like perfume. He was notably rougher when drunk, and Lyanna had hissed when his fingers dug into her hips so he could lift her off the ground and toss her on the bed. His mouth moved up her stomach, his beard chafing her skin, before it reached her lips, where he hovered without kissing her. Then he growled.

“I want to fuck you in your bed,” he said in his slurred speech. Lyanna’s eyes opened to see that his were narrowed, dangerously so, and there was a sneer to his lips.

“My bed? In my room?” she asked to clarify. Jon was sleeping there. Or perhaps he was not asleep at all, but rather wide awake and waiting for her to return to him.

“Aye,” Robert responded, before dipping his head to her neck again. “I’ve wanted to fuck you there for as long as I can ‘member.”

“But Robert-“

“I used to think that if I married you here, that your bed would be our marriage bed,” he says again her skin, but there is a hint of malice.

“This bed is better than mine,” Lyanna says in protest, moving her hands up and down his arms to soften him though her touch. “There’s no reason to go, my love.”

“I want to,” he growls against her. The grip on her hips tighten.

“We can’t, Robert,” she hisses back, made uncomfortable by his touch.

“We will,” he responds. He gets up off her and onto his feet, then grabs her wrist, yanking her from the bed. Lyanna stumbles forward, and is half-dragged by Robert as he gets to the door. In a vicious movement, Lyanna pulls her wrist back, wrenching it from his iron grip. Robert turns and pins her with hard eyes, then moves to grab at her again.

“Jon is sleeping in my bed!” she finds herself exclaiming as she backs away from Robert. Her words stop him in his tracks, and his grimace grows ever deeper.

“What?!” Robert asks in a roar, his famous temper reaching its peak. “Your boy’s too damned old to be in your bed!”

“He’s there, Robert, and I shan’t wake him for you,” she returns sharply, meeting his fiery glare. “It doesn’t matter what bed we’re in. Yours will do us well.”

He walks toward her and sticks a finger in her face, still baring his teeth in a sneer. “I want him out by tomorrow,” Robert says in warning. “Or I’ll drag him out of your bed myself.”

Lyanna thinks this an empty threat, one not worth responding to, but it is a threat all the same. She knows herself; she knows very well that if Robert were to lay a hand on her son, that she would go to any length to stop him. The thought of Robert’s rough hands, which bruised her in his affections, pulling frightened little Jon out of her bed, her room, a place that was supposed to be safe, would drive her completely, utterly, and irretrievably mad.

Lyanna can only tighten her lips and stare him in the eyes. “He will not be in my bed by tomorrow night,” she says coldly. “But gods help you if you touch him, Robert Baratheon.”

“Gods help me,” he repeats in a snarl. “The fact that you coddle Rhaegar’s bastard is enough to drive me mad.”

She thinks to strike him, and hopes the blow would make him bite his tongue clean off, so that he would never speak again. _Not Rhaegar’s bastard,_ she wants to hiss as he bled from the mouth. _My son._ But Lyanna’s temper had long been tamed, it’s once-perpetual flames watered down into ashes the second she stepped into Essos with a babe at her breast. There were cruelties and injustices in the world; to grow angry at all of them would have made her a poor, dead mother.

So Lyanna holds her tongue and lets Robert use her body as he wished that evening, knowing very well this would be the smaller of the two sacrifices she would make.

She slips away from supper the next evening at the same time the children are being put to bed. She feels Robert’s eyes following her as she does, seemingly aware of her purpose. Before she can even reach her chambers, she feels nauseous.

 _I am ousting my son from my bed,_ she tells herself. _I do this on Robert’s wishes. This is best for him. Isn’t it?_

Jon had never spent a night in his life outside her bed. From the day he was born until now, a tall boy of eight years of age, he slept by her side. It was a comfort to the both of them.

She finds him sitting up in her bed with a book in his hands, reading by the candlelight. When she enters, he looks up, and smiles at her.

“You’re early,” he says in his childish voice, and wraps his arms around her neck when Lyanna came to sit beside him. “You always sleep late.”

Lyanna kisses his shoulder. “I know, love,” she says in return, trying to mask her sorrow.

When he pulls away from her, he scoots to his left, making room for her to slip in. When she doesn’t, he looks to her with a puzzled look. “Let’s sleep, mhysa,” he says, making the effortless switch to Bastard Valyrian.

Lyanna does the same. “You must sleep in a different bed tonight, my love,” she says with a tight smile, swallowing the bitter taste in her mouth.

“Okay,” he says sweetly. “Let’s go to a different bed.” He begins to shuffle out, but Lyanna stills him.

“No, my love,” she murmurs. “You must go to a different bed, by yourself.”

His eyes widen in… fear? Shock? Lyanna cannot tell. Her son was born with an ambiguity she has yet to solve.

“I don’t want to,” he insists softly, dumping himself in her lap and burrowing his face in her breast. “I want to go where you go.”

“But you are such a big boy,” she said in a voice turning thick with emotion. “You need your own bed. You are growing up, love.” She disgusts herself with those words. Children had to grow at their own rate; forcing it was something Lyanna never wished to do.

“I don’t want to,” he says again.

Lyanna runs a hand through his hair. He tilts his head back to look up at her, and there is a sudden change in his stormy grey eyes. It was that spark intelligence that was foreign to children his age, and even to some adults. He understood.

Jon slips off her lap, getting to his feet. With one hand, he takes the book from the bed, and with the other, he holds hers. Soundlessly, he leads her out the room and to a door farther down the hall. Lyanna knows it as the room Ned had prepared for Jon, the one he had yet to peruse.

Lyanna opens the door, and finds it to be a room set up similarly to her own. A book shelf, a writing desk, a dresser, and a large, spacious bed in the center, covered in furs. Jon lets go of her hand, and then walks to the bed, climbing up into it. Lyanna makes her way to his side, pulling up a chair to sit beside the bed without getting in it. She holds his hand, prompting him to look up at her with his naturally sullen face.

“What a lovely bed!” Lyanna commented with forced delight. “It’s just like mine, isn’t it, Jon? A bed for grown-ups.” Jon does not respond; he only looks at her with mournful eyes that spoke volumes. Lyanna’s smile slips from her lips.

“It will only be until King Robert is gone,” she affirmed, stroking his fingers with her thumb. “Then you may come back to my bed. Or perhaps I’ll come to yours.”

“Okay,” he says flatly, not any happier by her reassurance. Lyanna cannot stand it; the sad look of defeat, his faraway eyes, and that slight little frown. And all for what? For a man who values her for what her body had to offer, however little it was? He was a man with the power to ruin them, and for that, Lyanna had to relent.

“What are we, Jon?” she asks, beginning an old game they used to do, one that was done when Lyanna had to be away for long hours at work.

“Wolves,” Jon says in reply, picking up an old clue.

“And wolves do what?”

“They stick together.”

“Why?”

Jon hesitates before speaking, but not because he has forgotten. Jon did not forget anything. “Because the pack survives.”

“Yes, my little wolf, the pack survives,” Lyanna affirms fiercely, squeezing his fingers and giving him a strong gaze. “There are stags, dragons, lions, and so many other creatures that are bigger and stronger than the wolf, and who would hurt them if given the chance. But the wolf is not gentle.”

“The wolf is strong too,” Jon says for her, nodding.

“And smart,” Lyanna reminds him of their best trait. “If we are wolves, then we are strong and smart too.” She leans into him, and he does the same so that their foreheads touched and their noses brushed one another’s. “When a wolf is alone, he howls for his pack. But when the wolf is quiet, he closes his eyes and thinks. He remembers the pack’s smell, their noses, their furs, their paws. Close your eyes, little one, and think of me until I return.”

“Yes, mhysa,” he says softly in reply. Lyanna closes the gap between them and brushes a kiss to his lips before slowly pulling away from him. She kisses his hands and hair too, and gives him one final embrace before she slips out of his room and returns to her own.

Robert was already there, fiddling with something at her desk. When he realizes she has entered, he drops the item, and then looks to her with a slight smirk.

“An empty bed,” he noted passively before stepping to her. He puts his hands on her hips, inflaming the bruises already there. “Just what I like to see.”

Later, as he held her in the bed of her girlhood, Robert presses his lips to her ear and whispers, “I love you, Lya.” Lyanna had remained quiet, despite wanting to see that she didn’t love him, that he wasn’t allowed to call her Lya, that the name belonged to her brothers, not him. “Say that you love me,” he suddenly urges her. “Even if you don’t mean it, say that you love me.” What a request! He did not deserve those words from her, not tonight.

“I love you,” she says, but in her head she saw Jon, and it was to him that she was saying it, in such a soft howl.

“That’s how it should have been if we had wed as we were supposed to,” he mumbles before kissing her ear. “That’s how it ought to have been.”

 _Nay, my lord,_ she thinks to herself. _That would have never been._


	6. VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benjen comes to visit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay; enjoy!

Benjen had come to see her.

When he arrived at the gates of Winterfell, Lyanna had not quite believed that the man atop the black horse was her sweet little brother. Nay, the person who sat tall and proud upon that stallion was a man. The last Lyanna had seen Benjen he was but a boy. He had been three-and-ten with clumsy arms and stumbling legs, all four limbs too long and too awkward. All that unfettered growth had turned him terribly shy; his white cheeks would turn the brightest red when strangers looked at him, and he would cling to her as a babe would his mother's skirts, never wandering too far from her side, and near tears when he had to. But as that same brother dismounted before her, Lyanna could see that this was no longer true.

Her little brother stood tall, taller than she by half a foot, his back straight and held erect by a muted but formidable confidence. His limbs were still long, but he had grown into them nicely, and he seemed to take after their mother, as she had, with a lithe, slender form that was clearly hardened with muscle. There was a beard on his face, which was still long and sharp as she remembered it, though his eyes were not the bright, childish orbs from his boyhood. Nay, they were jaded and cold, the eyes of a man who had done and seen much.

But those eyes softened when they rested upon her, and a little smile graced his grown face. "Lya," he said aloud in a voice that had grown deeper than his boyish pitch of yesteryear. Lyanna found herself frozen, mesmerized by the man her brother had grown to be. That man closed the gap between them and pulled her into his arms. He was warm, and that much was familiar. When she buried her nose into those black furs, she smelled home on him, scents of wet earth and boiled leather, and it was then that she embraced him too.

“Little Benjen,” she whispered, still in disbelief. Her brother, her little brother, the one she had wished day after day could have been beside her in Essos, if only for an hour, a second, was now in her arms and did not seem to want to leave.

“Not so little anymore,” he returned, and she could hear the smile in his voice. She wondered if even his smile had changed. “I’ve missed you, sister,” he murmured in his new and unfamiliar voice; even so, Lyanna squeezed him a little tighter.

She was struck dumb for hours after their reunion by all of these differences in him. Ones that she should have expected, since it had been nine years since she’d last seen him. But she could not help but feel shocked. She had more or less raised Benjen after mother died, much like Brandon had raised her, and it was in the same manner too. This meant roughhousing and impatience, but Lyanna had not been without her maternal streak, even then. When Benjen would trip and scrape his knee, she would shout for him to get up and quit crying, as Brandon always had done to her, but in seconds found herself on the floor, wiping away at the bloody cut with her sleeve, then walking him to the maester's solar to be treated. Brandon said she was going to make him soft, but Lyanna ignored him, liking it better that Benjen kissed her cheeks and held her hand instead of trying to swallow the lump in his throat and refusing to admit that he hurt.

It was clear now that little Benjen Stark was far from soft.

He took to doing much of the speaking, perhaps sensing that she could hardly squeak, and prattled on about nearly everything. Winterfell while she was away, training at the Wall, ranging beyond it, catching a glimpse of Mance Rayder, and of the journey back to Winterfell.

"I would have come to see you sooner, sis," Benjen told her with a soft smile. "But they don't like to spoil their men up there. Took me a whole year to convince the Lord Commander, and that was after taking on jobs I didn't want to do. Not to mention the ride down here. It's damn near two hundred miles south, with too much darkness and trees." Then he grinned a grin that shone as brightly as it did nine years ago. "But I'd do anything for you, Lya."

Lyanna thought briefly about how strange it was that Winterfell could be considered south from anywhere, as it was as far north as she had ever been, but she could see now that her brother had done, and would continue to do, things that were impossibly far out of her reach. And perhaps it was not for lack of courage or fortitude, but of the restraints she had put on herself. Her lust for adventure seemed to have been firmly stamped into ashes, while Benjen's only grew.

By nightfall, the two sat shoulder to shoulder by the fireplace, with her hand resting in his. _Now this,_ she mused thoughtfully. _This is familiar._ Though her brother was as tall and strong as a young tree, he was still her brother. That little pup was somewhere still inside, black as night, and just as enveloping.

It was by the fire that he paused from his stories and asked his first question. "Why'd you leave, Lyanna?" he asked softly. She turned her head on his shoulder to find him frowning.

"I had to," she answered simply. Tears pricked her eyes when she saw his frown deepen, but he did not prod further.

"I wish you hadn't," he responded, then turning his head to press his forehead to hers.

She was nearly entangled in the grips of sleep when he lifted her off the floor and carried her to her bed, though she mumbled that he didn't have to. She felt like she was in pain when he put her down so gently atop her featherbed, and pulled the sheets around her. Her chest tightened, partially due to the bittersweet lump in her throat at seeing Benjen again, and partially because her bed was a horrible place when Jon wasn't there. Lyanna thinks in the moments before slumber that she may tell Benjen of how her and Jon always shared a bed, until Robert made it so that they couldn't, and that in the week that Jon was ousted, he had grown so rapidly that he did not return to her bed when Lyanna urged him to.

"I like my new bed, mhysa," he had said to her with a grin that was more Benjen's than any other brother.

"Don't grow up without me," she had wanted to say to Jon then. "Not like Benjen had," she wanted to add now.

That children had to grow up had to be the greatest injustice, truly.

* * *

They watched as Jon sat upon his horse, which was little more than a foal, and rode circles around the yard. It was a horse that Ned had bought for him shortly after they arrived in Winterfell, though Jon feared to sit upon for moons afterward. In Essos, he had only ever seen people ride horses and sometimes lingered nearby when Lyanna tended to them in an inn's stables. But when he took a chance at riding, he proved to be a natural.

It brought a swell of joy in Lyanna's chest to see her son atop a horse, and doing well in such a position too. Perhaps it was to be expected, as Lyanna had been much the same, having taken to riding as a babe took to a mother's teat, quickly and with little help. Thus, she accredited her son's skill to herself, ignoring the fact that his father had been a formidable rider as well, perhaps not as well as herself, but that he knew how to ride hard and fast, as every warrior knew.

Lyanna had not ridden a horse once in her time in Essos. Over there she moved from place to place by foot, the luxury of a horse too expensive. It was a sorely missed activity, one she had given up with a heavy heart, and she feared for some years that she would never ride again. Upon her return to Winterfell, Lyanna found the saddle again, and her skill from years past came in a rush. Though she did not ride as swiftly or as deftly as her memory recalled, the feeling of freedom, the cold air kissing her skin, her hair streaming behind her were feelings that changed little despite her lack of fortitude.

It mattered not, now. Lyanna would put what was good about her past in her son, so that he may live it as she did. And if the gods were good, he would ride just as well as she once did.

"Well, he's certainly your son," Benjen remarks from beside her, leaning forward on the wooden rails as she did. "Anyone with two eyes can see that."

A flush of pride warms her cheeks. Her eyes stay on Jon, confident atop his horse, his face pink from the giggles that kept slipping past his lips. With ease, he turns and trots over to Robb, and the two cousins exchange words.

"Jon," Benjen said her son's name around, testing it on his lips. She feels his eyes on her as he speaks again. "Just Jon?"

She knows what he's asking, and it brings a bitter taste to her mouth. With more fire than she intended, she returns, "Just Jon." Benjen turns quiet; for a harrowing moment, Lyanna thinks it was because of her harshness. She extends a hand, placing it on the black fur on her brother's arm. His eyes meet hers, grey on grey, and offer a glint of understanding.

"I'm not Ned, Lya," he offers kindly. "I'm a crow, not a lord. Names don't matter to me."

Lyanna nods, relieved. "Ned thinks I'm a fool for it, for not giving him a surname," she notes with a grimace. She is not angry with her elder brother, only frustrated, though that emotion is not foreign to Ned. It was too often in her girlhood that she had wept to her solemn brother, knowing he was sweeter than Brandon, and he had returned with an insistence to do her duty. It was not what Lyanna wanted to hear- not then, anyway. Now Lyanna knew duty better than most. "But he is no bastard, my Jon, and he is certainly not a Westerosi. Surnames in Essos were pointless. Bastards and statesmen alike went without them." This was true; the name 'Stark' had carried as much weight as 'Snow', and both meant just as little. There was no weight to throw around but gold— now _that_ had mattered.

"Have you a plan for him?" Benjen asks, a question that had been haunting her since she arrived.

"I think," Lyanna starts, before pausing to lick her lips. She tilted her eyes down and continued. "I think he should do what he likes. If he has no name to bind him, then he has many opportunities, does he not? He may become a knight, or bannerman to Robb, or..." Lyanna trails off, not another example popping up in her mind. Or rather, there were some, but they aimed low. Innkeeper, freerider, messenger; things that lowborn folk did. "Perhaps he may start his own house," Lyanna offers suddenly, vigor returning to her voice. "He may pick his own name, receive a plot of land from Ned, and do what he likes with it. He may marry a highborn girl, and-" She bites her lip, hating herself for saying something that was both foolish and callous. How often did men find success in creating a new noble house when older ones suffocated it? How would a man seen as a bastard, albeit not a Westerosi one, ever hope to achieve greatness in such a stifling position? This was not the age of the Rhoynar, nor was this Essos. Men did not fashion themselves into something great by simply working for it. It could still be done, but not without difficulty. Ned's sponsorship would aid, and an alliance with a willing house would be better.

Lyanna looks to her little son, bright and content, and thinks that she would not wish highborn obligations on him. Lyanna had hated them herself; all that flattery, always having to look her very best, catering to every young lord with kindness because he may one day be her husband. But perhaps Jon had a mind for these things and she did not know it yet. She thinks to Rhaegar who had been raised a prince, accustomed to regal motions in life. Though he insisted to her he loved the outdoors, the ruins of Sunmerhall, and Dorne's hot sun, Rhaegar loved the court more. He loved his people. Perhaps that devotion had carried into the seed that he put inside her.

It would come as no surprise. Jon was his prince.

 _A prince,_ she muses briefly, mournfully. _My son was supposed to be a prince._ And now what was he? A bastard with no surname.

But she saw how Jon’s face lit up when he spotted his cousins and heard how sweet his voice would turn when he spoke to Arya or Sansa. He was happy, and the nuances of his name didn’t matter to him, and it was no concern of anyone else’s.

She suddenly realized that her little brother hadn’t asked a very predictable question. She turns her face to see him again, watching how he smiled kindly upon his nieces and nephews. Lyanna inches closer to him.

“Well, aren’t you curious?” she asks him in a whisper.

“I am,” Benjen returned. “About a lot of things.”

“About Jon?”

Benjen furrowed his brows. “What about him?”

Lyanna blinks, taken aback by the fact that he had yet to realize the obvious, or what she felt was obvious. It was the question Ned had asked, and Robert too. It was the question she hated the most.

“About his father; don’t you want to know?”

Benjen gave a knowing smile before darting his eyes from side-to-side. “I have a good idea who, Lya,” he whispered after looking around him.

Lyanna’s mouth goes dry as she tries to squeak out the next words. “But how?” Who would have said?

“Fear not, sister. When Ned wrote me he made sure to mention your boy, and about his father across the Narrow Sea. But I know better than that.”

Questions still swirled in her mind, and she felt very confused, more than usual. Benjen must have read her baffled expression, because he spoke again. “Have you forgotten? Lyanna, you told me of how you loved him. You told me he wrote you, and you wrote him.”

It suddenly comes rushing back: an image of her and Benjen underneath her sheets, a single candle between the two of them, as Lyanna whispered the words Rhaegar had written her in his latest letter. It was a less romantic letter than the rest, but a letter from the crown prince all the same. “Isn’t he kind, Ben?” she had said, back when her voice was clear and trembling with prospect. “He didn’t have to help me hide my armor at Harrenhal. He doesn’t have to write me. Do you think he loves me?” Ben had given her a nervous smile and nodded his head vigorously. “I think so too,” she added with a girlish blush.

“Oh,” Lyanna murmurs, suddenly feeling silly and foolish.

“Of course, I didn’t know you ran with him,” Benjen continued, his grey eyes going somewhere far away. “When you disappeared, I thought someone took you, someone bad. I didn’t tell anyone about him then; why would I? We didn’t know he had anything to do with it until weeks later.” His soft smile slips from his lips then. “But by then, Brandon was halfway to Riverrun and Ned was in the Vale. I didn’t tell father, though.” Benjen says sheepishly.

“Why not?” Lyanna asks, curious.

“You made me promise,” Benjen said almost childishly, like the boy she knew. “About the letters, about Rhaegar. I would have said it if it would have saved you. But I didn’t think it would.” Benjen looks her square in the eyes, humbling her. “I haven’t broken that promise.”

Lyanna is overcome with love for her sweet brother, for his loyalty and concern, and that sharp mind people so often overlooked. Lyanna threw her arms around his chest, burrowing her nose in his neck to smell the earth and the cold. He holds her closer to him; strange enough, it feels as if Benjen were older, as ancient as a weirwood, his white branches wrapping around her and making her feel safe.

“Welcome home, Lyanna.”

* * *

Ned comes to see her after a ride she took with Benjen. He gave her a look she was familiar with, a solemn little glance, that spoke more than words could. Shame burns her cheeks. With hesitation, Lyanna steps down from her horse, and gives a little nod to Ned.

“What is it?” Benjen asks behind her. Lyanna is too embarrassed to speak, but she’s angry too. “What’s going on?”

“Robert is here,” Ned says softly beside her. Lyanna does not need to look to Benjen’s face to know he is still baffled.

She pays close mind that she does not look to Benjen as Robert leads her away from supper that evening and into her chambers.

Robert was lustful tonight, as he always was, but there was an added vigor to his movements. He seemed to bound up the stairs quicker, tug her hand harder, and clutch her waist tighter. He lifts her up onto her dresser with ease before his calloused hands hold her face as he kissed her, his lips as warm as smoke. There is passion in his blood, but coldness in hers. She could think only of how she might explain her shame to Benjen, of how much time she was to lose with her brother with Robert’s visit, and of how she hated that Robert would not notice her discomfort at any of this.

He had stripped her down to her smallclothes before he pulled his blouse off. On instinct, Lyanna’s hands go to his belly to keep it from pressing on her, but where soft fat had met her fingers before, Lyanna’s feels hard ridges. She pulls away from him to allow her eyes to wander down to his middle, where, to her surprise, she sees chiseled muscle. The pattern continues to his chest, his shoulders, and his arms.

“Oh,” Lyanna says softly, though not in pleasure.

“Do you like what you see?” Robert asked her with a wide grin. Lyanna does not answer this question. “Gods, I trained like a dog for it. I spent hours and hours in the yard for you.” For you, he says, as if it’s a present. Lyanna did not ask for this. “I’d swing my hammer and think of you. That’s how I won the war, you know. With every man I killed, I thought of you.”

 _Am I supposed to be flattered?_ she wants to ask. Death was the last thing she wished to be associated with, but it was clear to her that Robert meant it as a high compliment.

His fingers graze her cheek, brushing her like a delicate flower rather than a weapon for war. “You make me feel alive,” he murmured before dipping down to kiss the tops of her breasts.

Does a man have to feel alive in order to kill? He killed her now, with each thrust of his hips, each one so much more punishing when muscle helped to bolster them, while he felt alive and she felt bitterness.

* * *

“How did this happen?” Benjen asks her, incredulous. They sat across from each other on the roof of the Great Keep, each one perched on the edge of a square stone.

Lyanna pulls her sleeve back down, cursing her carelessness. Her arms bore purple blooms where Robert pushed too hard. They didn’t hurt now, but they hurt then. Yet she knew it didn’t matter if they were covered or not; Benjen knew, as everyone else knew, why Robert came a thousand miles North. “Safety comes with a price,” Lyanna told him solemnly, sad to say it. “Robert promised my son that when he first came to see me. But not without conditions.”

“It’s foul, Lyanna,” Benjen urges her, hurt apparent in his grey eyes. “He’s using you. He can’t treat you like that-“

“Like what, Benjen?” Lyanna shoots back, tired of shame. “My body means nothing to me. He may use it as he may, so long as he keeps his end of the deal.” Lyanna shrugs passively. “Besides, he’s the King. Denying him would delay the inevitable.”

“You don’t love him, do you?” Benjen asks with near desperation, unable to come to terms with his sister’s violation.

“Nay, dearest Ben, I do not love him,” Lyanna admits with a sigh. “I did not love Rhaegar either, not truly, but I let him have his way as well.”

“Lya, it’s not-“

“No, Ben, it’s not,” Lyanna interrupts, short tempered. “It’s not honorable, it’s not kind, it’s not good, but I did it then and I do it now for the same reason. I would do better to please a king than to provoke him. I do it for Jon.”

Benjen goes quiet, pressing his lips together as he looked pensively to the hatch at their feet. The two sit like this for some time, silent save for the caws of ravens, both stewing in their own type of shame. Lyanna’s no doubt was greater.

“You deserve better,” Benjen mumbles after a pair of ravens perched on a square stone between them.

Lyanna gives a sad smile. “Do you think so?” She looks down to her lap. “I don’t know anymore.”

The pair eventually climbs the ladder back down into the Keep. Some ways down the stairs to the bottom floor, Lyanna stops walking, and puts a hand on her brother’s arm.

“I can speak to him to send more men to the Wall,” she offered, though she did not want him to refuse. “And not just criminals, but good men, strong men.” Robert could be very pliant when she put forth effort, but this she would not tell her little brother.

He seems to hesitate, perhaps trying to find a reason to refuse. “I would appreciate that,” he said after he furrowed his brows and looked to his feet. “But you don’t have to.”

“I want to,” Lyanna insists, squeezing his arm. “Let me do this for you, Ben.”

After a few moments of thought, he nods, throwing her a small smile. Lyanna cannot help but smile back, but wider and with more earnestness.

“Perhaps now you’ll owe me,” she says in jest, still grinning.

Benjen cocks a brow, catching onto her game. “Is that right?”

“Aye, that’s right.” Her heart quickens when his teeth show in a brilliant smile, and for a moment Lyanna felt a mother’s love for her brother, as she so often used to.

“I can’t say the Wall can offer much, but if you’d like, I can send you snow. Now that we have plenty of.” Benjen japes kindly. “What would you like?”

“Letters,” Lyanna states plainly. “I don’t ask for much; just once or twice a month, just a few words of kindness.”

Benjen sucks in his breath. “I do believe the Wall is running short of kindness, but I shall do my best.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

* * *

It was a conversation she was not supposed to hear. She knew this, but listened anyway.

“It can’t go on like this anymore, Ned,” Catelyn’s exasperated voice says from within Ned’s solar. Lyanna had come to tell him that Robert would be taking off early the next morning, and would like to break his fast before he goes. “His coming and going, his behavior, what he does with _her_ — it’s wrong.” Lyanna knew the his and the her. It was Robert and herself.

“Am I supposed to deny our king entrance to Winterfell then?” Ned returns in a strained voice, clearly perturbed by the situation as well. “He may be a friend, Cat, but his temper is not one to be inflamed.”

“I don’t care that he comes here. It’s what he does here that is bothersome,” Catelyn imparts as her voice grew higher and shriller. Lyanna winced at the noise. “We have children, Ned, daughters. Sooner or later they’ll learn what he comes here for, rather _who_ he comes here for, and what he does with her. Would you have them grow up thinking it is acceptable?”

“No, Cat,” Ned sighs, distressed. Lyanna knew what that looked like. There would be a little frown between his brows and a deeper one on his lips, but his eyes remained cool.

“I know she is your sister, and that you love her,” Lady Stark continues. Her voice grew lower all of a sudden, and Lyanna had to strain to hear. “But isn’t it enough that he house her and her bastard? Must we stand witness to her dishonoring herself?”

Ned remains silent, hard as ice. Lyanna silently cheers his staunchness on. She does not know what Lady Stark aims to propose, but it cannot mean well for her.

An anguished noise comes from inside, one that manages to be delicate and heart wrenching all at once. “I don’t want our daughters to aspire to be a king’s mistress, Ned,” Catelyn urges in a voice thick and ragged with emotion.

“Lyanna finds no joy in this,” Ned defends hesitantly.

“Then why does she do it?” Catelyn snaps. “Her body is her own. He may be a king, but she may deny him. What does she gain from her dishonor?” Catelyn didn’t know, she realized. She did not know if Ned would tell her the truth about Jon, but it was clear now that she hadn’t a clue. In Lady Catelyn’s eyes, Lyanna was playing mistress to a married king for no reason. Lyanna was dirty.

And in many ways, she was right.

“Please, Ned, do something. For Sansa, for Arya, and by the gods, for Robb too. He should grow to be a man who knows to respect women, not to take to whores—“ She turns silent all of a sudden, and the sound of soft weeping comes through the door. Ned must comfort her, for the sniffling ceases after a little while. “We have cottages outside of Winterfell,” she notes in her cracked voice. “Have one cleaned up, and send servants to live in it. Have the two go there for when he wishes to see her.” Then she adds, “Please, Ned.”

Ned does not answer to the issue. “Stay here, my lady, and wash your face,” he commands gently.

Lyanna backs away from the door just as it opens. Alarm flashes in her brother’s eyes, but it is not paired with anger. “Lya—“

“Please don’t,” Lyanna chokes out. She suddenly notices that she is trembling all over, and that her voice quakes too. “Please, don’t let me alone with him. Don’t make me leave, don’t—“

“It will only be when he comes north,” Ned said as if it were supposed to comfort her. Her breath falls short to her demands instead.

“Ned, I am begging you,” she urges with savage sorrow, reaching for her brothers hands, which she kisses and pressed to her forehead. “We will find ways to be more discreet. Your children won’t even know, not even your lady wife. By the gods, I’ll do anything, just please don’t leave me alone.”

But it was more than loneliness, but distance too. Loneliness she had felt a hundred times before, but distance was a harder gap to bridge. To be separated from her family, her loved ones, Jon, even for a short period of time, as Robert lay on top of her grunting like a rutting boar and insisting he loved her, that he loved her so much, that she made him feel alive and hard and rough.

The apologies in Ned’s eyes tell her all that needs to be said.

For a second, just a fleeting moment in time, Lyanna thinks to cry. She thinks to sink to her knees and sob, to let cries be torn from her body as the moon tea tore at Robert’s seed, but she swallows the urge like a sour brew.

Initially, she wished to blame Catelyn, but she found she could not. The woman only wished to protect her children, and what mother wouldn’t? Had Lyanna been in the same position, she would have been crueler, and have casted away the temptress from her castle before she had time to close her legs. Then her daughters would be safe from slattern, and her sons from temptation. And her children’s safety was the most important thing.

Lyanna understood this, and did not hate Lady Catelyn, who loved her children so much she sobbed at their futures, begged her husband to hide his slut of a sister, and did not fear any wrath or anger.

Lyanna did not hate Lady Catelyn, even if she never said her name once, as if each of the three syllables was filthier than the last.

“Oh, Ned,” Lyanna hears herself whimper. “Ned, please.”


	7. VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things develop further with Robert, and with Jon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay!
> 
> Warning for rape/non-con in this chapter.

"Your brother did good, didn't he?"

Robert looked too happy with himself. He walked around the bedchambers with a broad grin on his face, pushing open drapery here and kicking a leg table there. He sits on the bed itself, its sheets a shade of blue similar to his eyes, and bounces a little.

"No creaks," he announced with a satisfied smirk. "Not like your bed."

Lyanna suppresses the urge to return with a scathing comment. She was too nervous for that. The cottage, however quaint, was foreign to her. It was but three stories high with a large bedchamber on the top floor, a few smaller ones on the second, and the servant's chambers on the bottom, by the kitchens but away from the den. The kitchens themselves were clean and the furnishings were new, and the servants had just been hired. The walls were dreadfully cold, however, with no hot springs to heat them like in Winterfell.

"Come here, Lya," he calls to her like she was a dog, patting his legs too. She hated it when he called her Lya, the name only her brothers were allowed to use, and one that had no business on Robert's lips.

With hesitation, Lyanna lowers herself stiffly onto his lap, and closes her eyes when he begins to touch her.

* * *

The cottage itself is suffocating, but Robert is worse inside it. The cold walls and southern styled furnishings seemed to lend him a sort of freedom he did not practice in Winterfell. For one, he drank more. Lyanna had him drunk more than once, but it was never anything too severe apart of the slurring of his speech and slow movements. Within these strange walls, however, Robert would get piss drunk. Lyanna would hear him laugh and talk with his Kingsguard knights below, and eventually he would come up to their room so far into his cups that his senses dulled. He was sloppy, leaned more of his crushing weight on her, and his passion was quick lived. Lyanna could count the seconds from when he began to when he spilled, and she'd count again until he rolled off her, which he sometimes neglected to do.

This happened time after time, with no comment from either of them on the matter. Robert did not seem to notice the discomfort he put her through, nor did he seem to care.

"It's much better out here," he told her one morning as he nursed his headache with a cup of wine. "No children, no noise, no Ned and Cat. Just us." He took a gulp of his wine, then smacked his lips. "Less of a journey too."

Lyanna knew what he meant. He meant he was glad there were no reminders of the real world, relieved that he didn't break fast with the brother of the woman he was fucking and his wife and children. Here in this damnably unfriendly cottage, Robert didn't have to worry about guilt or shame. It was good for him.

It didn’t matter if it was good for her.

* * *

“Mama, look at this!”

Jon was showing off to her the new techniques the master-at-arms had taught him.

He was still only nine years of age, and was permitted only a wooden sword. But the child’s weapon acted as an extension of his arm as he spun on his heel, slashed through the air, jumped and hooted and nearly tripped over his own feet. There was a natural deftness about him in this art, which was perhaps to be expected, and the sight filled Lyanna with joy.

She clapped for him as he came down up his feet, wobbling only for a moment before keeping a strong pose with his sword sticking straight out at some unseen target. His face was a mask of solemn concentration before he broke into a wide smile, the likes of which Lyanna had seen very rarely in Essos. Tears spring into her eyes as she opens her arms for him, and he rushes into her embrace.

“I love it here, mama,” he expressed to her with the bright smile, grey eyes lighting up. “I want to play with swords forever.”

The eagerness in his voice prompted Lyanna to give a little chuckle. “You can if you so wish. You may become a knight and always have a sword with you.” One quickly came to mind: a blade as pale as milkglass, as large as a man, and shone like jewels in the sun. She had held that one more than once, but never had to strength to swing it.

Her son’s smile suddenly falters, and he gives a little frown before lowering his gaze. “I guess,” he mumbled, not nearly as excited as before. This worries her; she tilts his chin up and urges him to look at her.

“Are you alright?” she asks in Valyrian, searching his eyes for some ailment.

He gives her a little smile, then answers back in the Common Tongue. “I’m fine.”

Lyanna is a mother; she knows very well that he is not fine. And she also cannot help but notice that her son’s Pentoshi accent has nearly cleared, now being replaced with her own Northern one. This both pleases her and displeases; while it means he grows more the northman, it also seems to be effacing his Pentoshi learnings. He didn’t even like to speak to her in Bastard Valyrian much anymore.

“Do you think you might read to me later today?” Lyanna asked him kindly, hoping to get him to smile genuinely for her again.

Jon jumps out of her arms and swings his sword in the air again. “After Robb and I battle,” Jon tells her with fierce determination. She likes how he says “battle” as if the two were at war. In a way, they were. With only a couple months apart in age, they had been in perfect positions to mark the other as a rival. But when the two were not trying to best each other, they were true brothers, as thick as thieves as they played at everything together. Lyanna recalled no such rivalry in her childhood, but the brotherly affection was something she was quite familiar with, and part of the reason why she had returned.

“So along as you read to me later, you may do whatever you like,” Lyanna tells him with a warm smile, leaning back on her hands to watch him practice again.

When little Arya joins him in the yard, he puts down his sword and kneels down to be at eye-level with her. He spoke to her, though they were too far to hear, Lyanna could tell by his soft expression that they were kind words. His cousin beams at him at first, and while he speaks she bends down and grabs his sword. It is not without shouts and tears that Jon takes it back, but it is with gentle hands.

“I want to! I want to!” Arya’s voice rings out into the yard, louder than any clash of steel. “Swords! Swords!”

Though the girl was in sorrow, Lyanna could not help but give a little laugh. So much like herself, this little child was! What with her fire, her dark unkempt hair, and that stubborn set of jaw, the girl had might as well been her own daughter. When her septa comes chasing her from inside the castle, she tears herself from Jon’s steady hand and rushes into Lyanna’s arms, hitting her chest with all her force.

“Save me!” her niece cried as she climbed up into her arms and pressed her face into her shoulder. Lyanna gave another laugh, and held the girl close, putting a kiss to her ear.

“Come, come and hide!” she whispers to her, twisting her arms behind her to situate the girl behind her back. Arya clings to her waist with two small, strong hands, and pushes her face into her back.

The irritable septa comes over nearly stomping, but is kind enough to bid Lyanna a polite curtsey.

“Might I… receive the… girl, my lady?” she asks between heavy breathes, all red in the face from her efforts.

“What girl, kind septa?” Lyanna asks with intent to tease. The septa makes a scrunched face, displeased with the jape. Lyanna had no septa as a child, as her mother observed the old gods as her father did, and did not realize how sour these chaste women could be. She imagined they would have been fun to taunt, had she had one.

The septa reaches behind her and grabs Arya’s wrist, yanking her from her spot and onto her feet before her. The girl gives an impressive pout, and plants her feet in place as the septa began to drag her away. Lyanna gives a little wave good bye, the girl returns with a humph.

She looks to Jon briefly, to see him smiling and shaking his head. He looked to the girl with a sort of reverence, mimicking the gaze that her own sweet brother Ned would bestow upon her when Lyanna proved to be more wild than what was good for her.

* * *

Most of the times when Robert speaks, Lyanna finds it easy to close her ears and ignore him. He spoke loudly and often crudely, making it difficult to find comfort in conversation with him. The more he drank, the more his words slurred, and the less Lyanna could understand. That was perhaps the only good thing about his drinking.

It was only midday and he was already in his cups. He was blustering about something, shouting about the unfairness of it all. Lyanna sat at the writing desk and pretended to write, hoping to seem to busy for him.

He took a break in his speech to grab her shoulder, shaking her so that she looked up at him. His eyes were red and watery, bolding the blue of them.

“I swear by the gods, you’re colder than a northern wind,” he hisses to her. It may have been an arbitrary statement, but Lyanna did not know. She did not hear anything else he said. “Would it kill you to love me?”

Lyanna grimaces. “Why do you need my love?” she asks with more bite than she intended. “Your whores love you, plenty, I hear.”

He snarls and grips her shoulder tighter. “I don’t care ‘bout them. Only you,” she slurs before leaning down and pressing a wet kiss to her lips. She does not know why, but her irritability seems to be at a peak. She shoves him away and turns her head. This earns her a growl and a rough pull that takes her out of her chair and onto her feet. “Why can’t you love me?” he demands of her, as if the answer were impossible to see.

Her fury heats her ears as she looks him square in the eye, disgusting by what she saw. “Perhaps you’ll find that answer between a woman’s thighs on your trip home,” she remarks scathingly. The storm that passes over his eyes lends her to believe that he would strike her; instead, a he lets out a sharp, thunderous laugh.

“Bold words for the girl with a bastard,” he said with sudden cruelty, abandoning the defeatist behavior from before. “I could have that boy of yours killed, y’know. I’ll kill ‘im myself and spill his filthy dragon’s blood as I did his father’s. Perhaps I’ll put some on m’cock and have you suck it clean off, like the dirty whore you are.” He gives a harsh smile that sends waves of fear and anger traveling down her spine. Her hand trembled to strike him, to warn him, but Lyanna decides on words instead, words that tumble out of her mouth without her bidding.

“You are the only whore I see, Robert Baratheon, and you’re dirtier than them all,” she shoots back, clenching her fists. Gods be god, she hadn’t felt so incensed in so long-

A piercing sound sends her falling onto her legs. At least, that is what she believes had felled her, until a scorching spike of pain blooms upon her cheek. Her fingers tremble as they touch her face, but she finds herself wincing at the slightest brush. Her mouth goes dry as the agony seems only to grow, and she suddenly hears her father telling her something he had said years ago: _”You suffer from wolf’s blood, dearest daughter, as your brother does. It will cost you both some day, if you cannot control it.”_

“Gods,” she hears Robert curse from above her. “Why can’t you control yourself?” he asks as if this were all her fault. “I wouldn’t have to do that if you’d behave, damn it!” He kneels before her, and grabs her wrist where her hand hovered above her burning cheek. He must be inspecting the mark he left behind, though Lyanna does not look to him to see.

_Do not look at him,_ she urged herself. _Do not speak to him. Do not touch him. He’s not there, Lyanna. It’s only you. You’re alone now._ An old mantra, from a time long gone.

She cannot even stir when Robert suddenly puts her on her back and lifts her skirts, his rough hands offending against her skin as he tore off her smallclothes. He growls something about loving her, but Lyanna does not allow herself to hear him clearly. When he is on top of her, inside her, biting kisses to her neck, she keeps her cheek pressed to the cool stone and stares at a yellow bird hopping on the windowsill. She was trying to leave her body. She had done it once or twice before, taking flight from her flesh to become a fox sniffing for prey or a dog tearing into a rabbit’s flesh. She wanted to do it now, become that hopping, carefree bird, but she couldn’t do it now. Instead, she willed herself not to feel, even when it burned and ached and the stones of the hard floor dug into her back.

When he is finished he scoops her from off the floor and deposits her on the bed before leaving. She does not stir for hours. Not when the knights below are rowdy, or when women’s high giggles reaches the bedroom. She lies completely still, and tries again to leave her body, even though that bird is long gone.

Robert comes to her bed that evening, large fingers brushing her bruise and inflaming it, fingers that eventually travel down her body and leave more marks.

She remembers accidentally murmuring ‘no’ more than once, and that she pressed the heels of her hands into his chest to get him off, but he is deaf to her.

The next morning, Lyanna sits at the desk until he wakes. When he does, she stands, and drops her nightgown to make him see, in plain morning light, the blue and purple blooms he left on her neck, breasts, hips and thighs, all whilst turning her throbbing cheek to him. She says nothing. She only shows.

He looked at her with an expression between sorrow and pity, and mumbles, “It’s the wine that makes me do that, Lyanna.”

She stays silent, and wonders what Rhaegar’s excuse might have been.

* * *

It is some moons after Jon’s nameday that he asks a question she hoped he would never have to ask.

He had picked at his food that evening, pushing his meat around the plate but never putting it in his mouth. As a mother, Lyanna had grown keen of her son’s behaviors, even as they developed so rapidly in Winterfell. She knows there is something wrong; to her, it is as clear as day.

She thinks to go to his room and ask what the matter might be, but it is he that meets her first, in her own bedchambers. They sit side-by-side underneath the sheets, Jon holding her arm and burying his face in the crook of her elbow. He does not speak, and she does not press. She strokes his hair and waits on him.

He speaks eventually, his words muffled as he did not raise his head from her arm, but she hears him all the same. “Am I a bastard, mhysa?”

Lyanna bristles at the word. “Did someone say that to you?” she asks him, grasping his hand. He does not nod, but Lyanna understands. “Who said that to you?”

“Some boys,” he said in return. When he tilts his head up to look at her, she sees that his eyes glimmer with tears. “Am I a bastard?” he asks again, darling face looking terribly mournful.

Lyanna’s first instinct to protect. She is a she-wolf, after all, and she fights for her children. She shields them from harm, at all costs. “You are no bastard, Jon,” she insists fiercely, meeting his watery eyes to be sure he understood. “You are my son, my only boy.”

“Then who’s my father?”

Lyanna heart skips a beat at the inquiry. How long had she feared this question? How long did she have to prepare? Yet, her answer is not as practiced. She decides on something less heavy; he was still too young.

“Your father was a warrior, and now he’s dead,” she tells him plainly, using her finger to keep his chin up when he tried to look away. “He loved you very much, Jon. He wouldn’t want you to think yourself a bastard.” Not at all; the had fought to try and make it so he would be nothing less than trueborn, but he failed, as he failed in many other things.

“Then why did they call me that?” he asks with the slightest edge of anger, frustrated by the world around him. Lyanna understood that frustration all too well.

“They’re fools; don’t you listen to them, my sweet,” she murmurs to him, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. The look he gives her after, that tight line of his lips, tells her that he would not listen. Like with any boy his age, the opinions of his friends meant more than that of his mother’s. But in that expression was a forlorn acceptance; before her very eyes, her son seemed to be growing up and understanding the harshness of the world. The thought frightened her. She wanted him to remain her little boy forever, the one that beamed at her when she came into view, the one who slept beside her in bed and read to her and thrilled her simply by being innocent.

Lyanna realizes this is her fault; she had primed him into being a boy who would accept cruelties quicker than others. It was she that abandoned him in empty apartments as she searched for work, she who had to forbid him sweets because she could not afford them, she who had to deny spoiling him in favor of food for an evening. And yet, it seemed Winterfell did more than she did, and without her help. Winterfell was in Westeros, and Westeros named him a bastard.

“Would you like to leave, Jon?” she asks him suddenly, savagely, prompting him to look at her with wide eyes. “Would you like to go across the sea again?”

A dark part of her begged that he would say yes, and free her from her own agony.

Instead, he shakes his head. “No, mhysa,” he replied in Valyrian. “I like it here.”

“Of course you do, my love,” she mumbles with a sad smile. Swords, freedom, horses, family— who would want to exchanged that for bare rooms and solitude? “Of course. We’ll stay.”

Then, he does something miraculous: he smiles. And Lyanna believes that she would endure a thousand pains to see that smile again, and often.


	8. VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyanna comes across uncomfortable truths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the HUGE delay! I've been busy and writer's block has killed me, but I'm back. Enjoy :)

Lyanna grabbed Jon by the wrists and gasped at what she saw.

Her beautiful boy of two-and-ten had raw, bloody knuckles that were still shiny from the freshness of the wound. Lyanna did not tremble at the sight; or at least, she did not tremble with anger or concern, but she trembled with confusion and fear.

"Why?" she asks him forlornly as he turns his face away, revealing again the purple bruise that adorned his cheek. He was already taller than her, having shot up five inches just in the past few moons, and the signs of his changing body were beginning to show. Lanky arms, lanky legs, and a hard look in his eye; a growing boy, though she hated to admit it. Lyanna caught his chin and turned his face toward her, forcing him to look at her. "Why?" she asked again.

"He said things about you," he mumbled at a volume she could hardly hear, but perhaps it was better this way, so she wouldn't hear the changing pitch of his voice. Regardless of the current softness of it, however, Lyanna feels a pang of pain in her chest. She had been the cause of this.

"What did he say that could have possibly been worth this? He is but a blacksmith's son."

"He called you a whore," he chokes out, anger masking the pain in his grey grey eyes, looking as bold as Brandon did when he learned she was to wed Robert. "He said that I'm the son of a whore, of a prince's whore and a king's whore, and I... I cannot let anyone speak of you like that."

Lyanna grimaces, touching the mark on his cheek. He hisses, then recoils, unable to bear the pain. "You know what you did is wrong. You cannot hurt people like this, Jon."

"No one ought to speak ill of you, mother," Jon grumbled, lowering his eyes.

"No one ought to, but they will," Lyanna says with a tight smile. "Will you beat everyone who does?"

"I will," he insists with a vengeance.

"You will _not_ ," she returns sharply. "If you must serve me, then have a care for your mother's sanity, Jon. Do not lose your gentle heart."

Lyanna touches his cheek again to remind him of the keenness of the pain before pulling his head down to put a kiss to his forehead. When she meets his eye again, she finds it unbearably melancholy, in a way more heartbreaking than Rhaegar ever could be.

"I just got so angry all of a sudden," he admits shamefaced, becoming her sweet boy again. "One second he was speaking, and then the next..."

"There is some wolf blood in you yet, my love. Like Brandon had, and I do," Lyanna notes with a pained smile. What good did such an affliction do for either of them? Very little, she thinks, and she would prefer her son did not suffer the same. Lyanna strokes his fingers, staying away from his ruined knuckles so as not to hurt him further. "You are too kind to waste your passions on violence. I beg you, Jon, do not do something like this again." His eyes remained lowered, noncommittal. Lyanna pushes his chin up until he was forced to meet her gaze. "Promise me," she adds fiercely, her mother's heart hardening so as to force a lesson.

"I promise," he mumbles in return, earning him another kiss, this time on his hands.

"Run along to Maester Luwin so he may dress your wounds," she urges of him, letting him go. He gives a nod and leaves her room to do her bidding. Lyanna watches as he walks away feeling as if she had failed him, and it is not until he is out of sight that she truly trembles. Her son was no monster; that he would react so violently frightened her beyond words. Worse still is that it was rumor of her on an ill-begotten tongue that inspired him to act so.

This was not her son; her son was gentle, sweet, kind. She feared more than anything that he would harden.

But harden he did, and would continue to do. It is lucky for her that she can still slip under that iron and reach her son inside. He has lost all of his Pentoshi accent by now, sounding as Westerosi as his cousins. What was lost too was Valyrian; or at least so Lyanna thought as he used it so little. What used to be their private language became brushed aside, seldom used but for urgent moments. Lyanna wonders why he lost it all.

But at least he is still Jon. People called him a bastard; she knew they did, and she knew he heard, but he did not believe it. When introducing himself, he always said "Jon". Not Snow, or Sand, or Waters or any other meaningless surname, but only Jon. The truth of his father was still hidden to him, though instead of asking who he is, he asks what he was like. Jon thinks of the Bravoosi she invented for sake of rumor. Lyanna tries not to entertain these questions.

He was growing older, unfortunately, but already he was so mature. The horrors of the world had been made more than clear to him now; perhaps more so now that he understood what mother did with the king in their house together.

What he did not understand was why. Or perhaps, he had already invented an answer, but in any case, he had never asked her. For him to ask would mean Lyanna would have to lie, for the honest answer required she reveal the truth about his father, and the folly Lyanna had brought upon herself. There were many unanswered questions between her and her son, it seemed. But as he grew, he would come up with his own answers.

Lyanna shook her head. _Let me pretend,_ she finds herself begging. _Let me pretend that nothing has changed._

The love between them was still there, at least. It was impossible to erase Essos from their past, memories of the two above the sheets on hot, sticky nights, the two talking to each other in the Common Tongue, or sharing each other's company. Forever remaining were the hours where Jon sat in her lap and read, sometimes aloud, sometimes in his head, or when she held his hand as they walked through the marketplace, not always with coin, and ogling sweets with watering mouths, and sometimes, only sometimes, buying some.

Jon was not that child anymore, she knew. Yet it broke her heart all the same.

His knuckles were bandaged at supper, the white linen stained slightly red in four spots on each hand, and though Lyanna had seen blood enough in her life, she suddenly found herself squeamish at the sight.

 _Those wounds are your fault,_ a cruel little voice reminded her in her head. Lyanna thinks she would be ill if Jon came to her with wounds such as those again. Was it not enough that he grew before her eyes? That with each passing moment she feels Rhaegar’s spirit in him, that sharp intelligence and those piercing eyes, reminding her forever of her folly?

She thinks now of Brandon, of how he had bloodied his knuckles more times than Lyanna could count. Jon looks like Brandon, as Stark-like as they both are (were, in Brandon’s case). Dark hair, dark eyes. But where Brandon was wild, Jon was calm, a still sea to Brandon’s turbulence.

The wildness in Jon grew now. The blood on his hands was indication of that much.

She excused herself early from supper to rest her aching head. It seemed that the very thought of Jon’s change from a sweet, innocent pup to a guarded, jaded wolf was enough to make her stomach ache, like the pains of childbirth all over again.

* * *

Riding through the fields with Arya at her side felt too much like her girlhood. Her little niece of six years had a spirit that was purely Stark: wild, free, and too stubborn for her own good. For her own sex too, as Lyanna knew that being a spirited highborn girl rarely brought much happiness.

But the girl was happy now, riding bareback with her aunt, the two tearing through the grass as if they were sliding on ice. Lyanna was careful to go slower than she was capable of so Arya did not lag behind; and when an impromptu race was called, Lyanna slowed even further so she could she the beam of a smile on Arya’s flushed face.

“I won!” Arya exclaimed with glee, letting out an excited laugh. Lyanna laughed along with her, surprised at her own happiness. “You’re not letting me win, right?”

“Not at all,” Lyanna promised with a smile. “You’ve won, fair and square.”

“Wait ’til I tell Robb. He hasn’t even beat you once; he’ll be _so_ jealous.” Excitement traced every dark feature in her face, grey eyes lighting up like the moon on a still night.

It may be wrong to prefer one niece over the other, but Arya had a special place in Lyanna’s heart. Her carefree spirit and boyish ways rang loud and clear to her own girlhood full of innocence and the wild splendor of the North. What was more, Arya seemed to actually be fond of Lyanna; Sansa, as lovely and beautiful as she was, seemed to take more of a wary approach to her aunt. No doubt she listened to her mother.

Arya, thankfully, didn’t. She did what she wanted and behaved as she wanted, unrestrained by a septa’s chastisement or her mother’s disapproval. Ned too indulged her, much like he used to when they were children, when Ned would visit from the Vale and remain hot on her heels, caring for her as she went from one stupid thing to another. Arya did receive more freedom, however. She was training in archery where Lyanna’s own lord father never let her near any weapon of any sort. Just as well; a girl ought to learn how to defend herself.

But _gods_ their similarities were heartbreaking. Dark unkempt hair, wide grey eyes, a long, sharp face; she could have been Lyanna’s daughter. She sometimes wished she was. That way she would not be obliged to marry any young lord once she was grown and flowered, for who would want to marry the daughter of a whore?

Lyanna thinks that if she were truly like her, Arya would like this too. All of the feminine, starry-eyed characteristics of a little lady poured itself into Sansa. Arya had a warrior’s heart and a she-wolf’s teeth.

The two rode now at a leisurely stroll, allowing their steeds a welcome break. They wide ride back now, no doubt only to watch the boys spar in the yard as they so liked to do. Lyanna certainly liked to watch Jon and Robb clash swords; the intensity in their eyes was thrilling and their varied techniques seemed to resonate true to their builds and personalities. Lean, lithe Jon was swift, calculated, graceful, and his quick steps were like that of a water dancer’s. Broad, muscled Robb was powerful and reckless, but his blade hardly ever missed its mark. They balanced each other out and would fight forever if they could, but poor Rodrik Cassel needed a break from being master-at-arms to two stubborn boys.

Arya glanced over to her aunt, her eyes fixed curiously upon her. She had a question to ask; Lyanna could tell.

“Aunt Lyanna?” she asked, just as predicted. Arya had a bold tongue to go with her fierce demeanor, and did not shy from making inquiries.

“Yes, child?” she entertained with a smile.

“Is it true that Rhaegar Targaryen kidnapped you?” Despite the childish lilt to her voice, Lyanna’s blood runs cold. Such a name was hardly ever spoken anymore. Such a name was not welcome anymore.

“Where did you hear that?” Lyanna asked in a shaky breath, trying to keep her composure.

“In our teachings,” Arya answered plainly, failing to catch onto her aunt’s anxiety. “That’s what the books say, and what our septa taught us.” Oh, gods! It was in books? Perhaps it was to be expected; Robert’s Rebellion was part of history now, and its initial trigger was no small detail to be overlooked.

Still, Lyanna blanched, unable to be quick to answer. It was one thing to have people question from afar, but her own kin? She nearly felt ashamed to hear it on Arya’s tongue, though no doubt her septa taught her that the shame did not fall on Lyanna’s shoulders.

“Is it true?” Arya asks again, unyielding. Lyanna’s smile falters for the merest second before she dares to meet her niece’s eye again.

“It’s true,” Lyanna managed. Her fingers unconsciously gripped the reins, the hard leather biting into her skin.

“Then Rhaegar Targaryen really is a bad man,” Arya returns with an indignant pout on her face. “He took you. And the king wanted you back!”

Yes, this was history now, but by Arya’s words, she knew it was Robert’s history. The septa had likely cleaned up the tale before telling it, careful to omit that she had been raped and ravished but a dreaded feeling in the pit of her stomach told her she would read just that in a history book. Fear washes over her at the thought of its easy accessibility. Anyone who was literate could recount her tale, pity her or scorn her for it.

Jon could read it too, and learn the horrible truth.

Truth? Nay, not truth. A lie. But was it preferable?

Lyanna swallowed hard to quench her dry throat. She kept her eyes forward as she rode, trying to keep a steely demeanor as her little niece questioned her.

“I want to be like you, aunt Lya,” the girl confessed suddenly, catching Lyanna by surprise. “I want to be strong like you.” The grey pools of her eyes seemed too deep for a girl her age, too understanding. Lyanna felt as if her soul had been laid bare before her, and Arya knew her letters well enough to read it.

Lyanna gives a dry chuckle to ward away her unnerving. “Nay child, do not be like me,” she told her softly, offering a slight, humorless smile. “Be no one but yourself.”

“But you’re-“ Arya began before stopping herself. Lyanna raised a brow, curious, but the girl does not continue her words. She only frowns and looks down at her horse’s mane as they ride back to Winterfell.

When they arrive, Arya dismounts herself, jumping down from the horse with an audible oof before running off into the direction of the castle. As she was running in, Sansa was walking out with the steward’s daughter at her side. The two have a brief quarrel over something, ending in Arya’s tongue stuck out at her and Sansa’s face red from anger before the two parted ways again.

Lyanna watched her older niece cross the yard. She stood with her hands clasped over her middle, smiling and giggling to her friend. Her blue eyes were fixed somewhere off into the distance, but they were wide and dreamy.

Lyanna dismounts, curious to see what Sansa looked so fondly at. She comes up a few feet behind her, following her gaze to a score of knights riding into Winterfell. They were dressed in all their finery, their gleaming armor and hardy steeds. They were Northern knights as their banners signified, bearing proudly the Stark sigil.

She hears Sansa give a breathy sigh as they ride past her. One twirled a winter rose in his hand, and leaned down to gift it to Sansa, who accepted it with a pretty blush. It was young Jory Cassel, the young Captain of the Guard, his dark hair brushing his shoulders and framing his dark face. He was a handsome enough lad, Lyanna supposed.

Sansa gives another airy giggle before looking to her friend with minxish delight. There is a sparkle in the auburn lass’s blue eyes that jars Lyanna; something about it was so sweet and innocent and horribly naive, and all sparked by the sight of a knight.

“Jory Cassel is like knight out of the songs,” Sansa sighs with darling excitement. Her niece so loved songs, though bards hardly passed through Winterfell. Lyanna had loved songs too, believed in them as scholars swore by their histories, but that was a long time ago.

As she walks away from bright-eyed Sansa, Lyanna comes to realize to her sorrow that Arya is not the only one who takes after her.

* * *

Lyanna sat on the bed with her knees pulled up to her chest, trying to cover as much of her bare body as she could without having to steal under the covers with Robert. Though her breasts ached from his harsh attentions and the press of her knees to them exacerbated the pain, Lyanna would not stir. It was the safest way to cover herself without leaving the bed. Not that there was anywhere to go; downstairs his Kingsguard knights drank and fucked in the open den. She couldn’t even join them if she wished; Robert had his hand wrapped around around ankle, holding it tight. He was still awake, though his eyes were heavy-lidded with drink and exhaustion. She would have to wait until he slept before she could pry his fingers loose.

“Gods, you’re beautiful,” he mumbled, his thumb tracking over her anklebone. “And you’re mine. Mine…” He made a gruff noise as he brought his lips to her heel, kissing it sloppily. She might have found that charming, once upon a time, for a man to kiss her feet. She also might have loved Robert once upon a time, but that age came to pass too long ago to remember.

Her throat itches in fury, wishing to the gods that they would give her the courage to kill him. How easy would it be, when he slept beside her these nights, and she had hidden a dagger in the wardrobe? Just a quick slice and he would bleed onto sheets and out of her life. That part was easy; the consequences after would not be.

 _How much longer must I endure?_ she asks whoever listened in her head. _How much longer must I atone?_

“Mine… mine…” Robert mumbled again, rubbing his nose against her calf. “If you carried my babe, I’d have it. Our babe. Then you’d be mine…”

The wolf inside her bares her teeth. “You’re worse than Rhaegar,” she hisses to his inebriated form, aware that her words would carry no bite when he was this drunk and tired. He would not remember it the next morning and he would not understand it now. A small blessing.

Robert only looks at her hotly through narrowed eyes, though no scowl reached his face. In seconds, he falls asleep, the grip on her ankle loosening.

She opens her mouth to say something biting, but her resolve disappears as a cruel revelation befalls her: Robert and Rhaegar were actually very much the same.

To both she was a symbol of something they desired, of a destiny that they grasped for, but couldn't touch, so they projected it on her instead.

For Robert it was his past, a yearning for a time when he was handsome and muscled, and loved by all. He would win everything he took part in with enviable ease, and he had only Storm's End weighing on his head, which was no weight at all. He could charm and seduce, laugh and fuck, and live as he wanted with nary a thought to responsibilities, and certainly not a kingdom. It was a time where he was betrothed to her, a woman he loved, the woman he _should_ be married to. When Robert fucked her for the first time, as he always believed he was entitled to, the connection with glory days past, he reverted to his old arrogant self, trimmed down to muscle, and took her and used her as he would have as his wife years ago.

Rhaegar had looked ahead; he looked to the future, one he was convinced that he would improve. He never spoke of what he left behind, as it was always what was to come that truly mattered, it was what he lived for and what he dreamed of. Life for him was predestined, manifested in a prophecy that could not be fulfilled in the present, and needed years to develop. He saw putting his seed in her as his favor to the world, and when it quickened, he put it in her because she held all that was dear to him, a child who would one day grow to honor him.

These men were greedy. A mere brush with their fantasies was not enough. A kiss or an embrace was only a taste of what they desired, but they would not take her without indulging their lust for honor, and marrying her first. It was then that they clutched to their dreams in the most intimate way, felt themselves become a part of it, and they did it by fucking her, over and over, never once tiring of that glorious rush of true fulfillment. To these men, Lyanna was something to possess, to conquer, to use, then reconquer. She was not to be cultivated, cherished, and respected. Lyanna was a thing to own, to corner and cage, to tie down and manipulate so that they may never have to be without the thing they loved.

That thing was not her. Neither Rhaegar nor Robert loved Lyanna Stark. They only loved what she represented, and thus both hoarded her in similar ways, but for different reasons. Lyanna was Robert's should be and Rhaegar's could be.

There was never a chance for happiness.

Lyanna trembles as she pulls Robert’s thick fingers off her ankle, then stumbles out of bed. She finds a robe in the wardrobe, the one that hid the dagger in its large pockets. She wrapped it around herself, tying the cord with shaking hands. The blade rested against her thigh in cold reminder of what she could do, if she took the chance. She pats it with her hand, then wraps her fingers around the edge through the robe.

Her eyes flit to Robert’s bulky, sleeping form, so far gone in his heavy slumber that the gods themselves could not wake him. A slice to his throat would feel like a lover’s kiss, one that he would no doubt invite.

Lyanna chews her lip. How tempting, how _perfect_. She could do nothing to the first man who wronged her, but here lied the second waiting for her revenge. He would stain the sheets and red, and she would— Would what? Run again? Or accept her fate as kingslayer?

She pulls the blade from her pocket, turning it in her hands. A light thing, of no notable craftsmanship. It was a gift from Brandon on her tenth nameday. He had slipped it in her hand and told her to keep it a secret. It was the only blade she had ever owned.

As she tightened her grip on the dagger, the labor of Essos seemed a welcome change to the abuse her body received at Robert’s hands. She walks to the bedside, reaching out a hand to smooth back his short black hair. He had a handsome face, rugged and bearded as it was, but she had seen it enough times as he ravished her body raw that it seemed like an ugly mask at a mummer’s show. Too bad that Robert was such a horrible actor.

 _I’ll run after this,_ she promises herself. _I’ll take all he has and sell it. And then I’ll run._

“Alone?” a voice asks, and Lyanna whips her head around to find a crow at the windowsill. “Alone? Alone?” it seemed to caw at her, making such a horrible racket Lyanna thinks she ought to wring his neck. “Alone?”

 _Alone?_ Lyanna thought, her face falling. She thinks of Jon nestled in Winterfell, surrounded by cousins he would have never known had she not returned. She thinks of his soft smile, his fragrant neck, his dark curls that harkened back to Brandon, young, handsome Brandon. Could she leave him? Could she leave her only son? True, he had no need of her anymore. He was growing. Soon enough he would be a man grown, and the years would pass in the blink of an eye.

“Alone?”

Lyanna pockets the blade again, and backs away from Robert.

“I cannot,” she finds herself whispering to no one in particular, or perhaps she was responding to the crow. “Not without him. Not without my son.”

She would not take him back. He had known more happiness here than he would have ever know in Essos. The light of her life would dim back under the harsh Pentoshi sun, having pulled the wolf away from his pack. Old superstition creeps up on her. The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.

A pack of two was nothing to a pack of nine. It was weak. It wouldn’t work anymore.

Lyanna lowers herself onto the cold stone floor. No, she would stay. She could not leave him, and she could not take him, and thus she would stay.

Revenge would wait yet another day.


End file.
